co-occurrence of units with stylistically opposite connotations (bathos, stylistic irony).

From ancient times to the present, SD (each having a number of peculiar functions to perform) have been extensively employed by orators and writers to strengthen and embellish their styles of speech and composition.

The difference between expressive means and stylistic devices:

Among the functions, performed by both SD and EM, a peculiar place is occupied by so-called image- creating function.

2. IMAGE

IMAGE is a picture or an idea brought into the mind by words. The majority of scholars agree that a word is the smallest unit being able to create images, as it can reflect the surrounding world by naming, qualifying and evaluating it. But it doesn’t mean that language units of other language levels do not contribute to the creation of images (e.g. various syntactical media can enhance a peculiar emotional atmosphere). Nevertheless, image as a linguistic notion, is mainly built on such lexico-semantic stylistic devices as metaphor, metonymy, simile. It follows that the creation of an image results from the interaction of different meanings of a word (word-combination): a) dictionary and b) contextual (prompted by the speaker’s subjective original view and evaluation of things). Thus, two notions are present simultaneously; one of them substitutes the other. They may be either both abstract, or both concrete, or abstract and concrete.

According to I.A. Richards, the structure of an image includes:

1. the tenor, i.e. the general meaning;

2. the vehicle, i.e. the way of spreading one’s ideas;

3. the ground for comparison, i.e. the quality that one refers to when using a particular vehicle in relation to the tenor.

e.g. Her husband is a real hippopotamus.

Tenor – her husband;

Vehicle – a hippopotamus;

The ground for comparison is the set of qualities which are associated with the hippopotamus: fat, lazy, stupid, ugly, slow.

Image is to be decoded by the reader. To decode it, the following aspects should be taken into consideration: a) the dictionary meaning of a word (or a word-combination); b) the contextual meaning; c) the connotation; d) the associations aroused by the image.

I.R. Galperin divided images into three categories: two concrete (visual and aural) and one abstract:

1. A visual image is a concrete picture of an object born in our mind’s eye:

e.g. The lazy geese, like a snow cloud

Dripping their snow on the green grass,

Tricking and topping, sleepy and proud (J.Ransom).

2. An aural image makes us hear the sounds of nature and things:

e.g. The Brook

I chatter over stony ways

In little sharps and trebles

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

The repetition of [b], [d] reproduces the sound of “chattering”,

“babbling” brook.

2. A relational image gives the idea of “the relation between objects through another kind of relation”, and the two kinds of relation reveal “the inner connections between things or phenomena”, e.g. Captain Vere may have caught Billy to his heart, as Abraham may have caught young Isaac on the brink of offering him up in obedience to the exacting behest (H. Melville).

Some scholars (McLin) divide images into literal and figurative ones.

Literal image is a picture or suggestion of actual physical qualities of an object:

e.g. I knew a man…

This man was of wonderful vigor,

calmness, beauty of person,

The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white

of his hair and beard, the immeasurable

meaning of his black eyes…

He was six feet tall; he was over eighty years old

(W.Whitman)

Figurative image is built on metaphor, metonymy or simile.

e.g. There is a garden in her face

Where roses and white lilies grow;

A heav’nly paradise is that place,

Where all pleasant fruits do flow

There cherries grow which none may buy

Till cherry-ripe themselves do cry (T. Campion).

The wider the gap between the associated objects, the more striking an image is.

Theme 2. Phonetic stylistic devices

I. Onomatopoeia

II. Alliteration

III. Assonance

IV. Rhyme

V. Rhythm

I. ONOMATOPOEIA [ֽәnәmætә′pi:ә] is using speech sounds to imitate the sound of what is being described – nature, people, things, animals etc. e.g. rustle, whistle, thud, buzz, purr, etc. Onomatopoeia is a Greek word meaning “name-making” as the sounds literally make the meaning in such words as clang, hiss, splash etc.

According to I.R. Galperin, there are two types of onomatopoeia:

Direct onomatopoeia is contained in words imitating natural sounds, such as cuckoo, bang, bow-wow.

e.g. “GLOOP! He plunged into mud with Hippo! KERPLONK! He jumped over the little rocks with Elephant…WHOOSH! he hid in the hole with baby Leopard”.

Indirect onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds the aim of which is to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense.

Indirect onomatopoeia is found in Byron’s poem “Beppo”. The poet compares two languages: sweet, melting, gentle Italian and English, “our harsh northern, whistling, grunting, guttural, which we are obliged to hiss and spit and sputter”. Thus, Byron reflects the acoustic nature of the whistling English language by repeating the sound [s]. The mention of what makes the sound is obligatory in indirect onomatopoeia (whistling language).

This SD is widely used in poetry and prose, where the use of onomatopoeia is sometimes more suggestive than imitative: e.g. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke…”

Advertising uses onomatopoeia as a mnemonic, so consumers will remember their products: e.g. Rice Krispies – “Snap, crackle, pop” when you pour on milk.

II. ALLITERATION [әֽlІtә′reІ∫әn] is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more words following each other immediately or at short intervals.

e.g. And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind (W.Wordsworth).

This SD is widely used in poetry and prose:

a) to achieve a melodic and emotional effect and enhance the rhythm of the sentence: e.g. 1. The great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo river (R. Kipling).

b) In the Old English period poets often used alliteration as there were no rhymes and words were mostly stressed on the first syllable. Alliteration was the principal structuring device unifying lines of poetry.

Modern poets also use alliteration as a substitute for rhyme.

e.g. She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down

To make a man to meet the mortal need

A man to match the mountains and the sea

The friendly welcome of the wayside well. (Edwin Markham).

c) Alliteration can be applied as a means of creating a mood.

e.g. Hear the loud bells –

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells (E.A. Poe).

The repetition of [b] and [t] stresses a feeling of urgency.

d) Alliteration is also used to emphasize certain words or a line: e.g. “…no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook”.

e) Alliteration unites lexically heterogeneous words through the repetition of their initial consonant, e.g. I have been reading a sad and absorbing story in Volume 6 of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In this volume you can learn all about cricket, cotton, costume designing, crocodiles, crown jewels, and Coleridge, but non of these subjects is so interesting as the Courtship of Animals, which recounts the sorrowful lengths to which all males must go to arouse the interest of a lady (J.Thurber).

f) Alliteration is widely used in literary titles (“Posthumous Paper of the Pickwick Club”, “The Last Leaf”), in corporate names (Coca-Cola, Rolls-Royce), in advertisements (Safe, secure, simple), in set phrases (sweet smell of success, money makes the mare go, down in the dumps), in nursery rhymes (Wee Willy Winky, Goosy, Goosy Gander). It helps to make phrases catchy.

g) Alliteration can be overdone sometimes, e.g. in Biblical sermons:

One of the greatest dangers of dangling, dazzling declarations before dazed disciples desiring decisive definitions of duties is to draw distinctions dimly, distort duties decidedly, and dismiss differences deftly.

The overdone alliteration often becomes an object of parody.

III. ASSONANCE [′æsәnәns] is the repetition of the same stressed vowels followed by different consonants in two or more neighboring words.

e.g. Old age should burn and rave at close day.

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light (D.Thomas).

Assonance here consists in the recurrence of the diphthong [eІ] in age, rave, day, rage and diphthong [aІ] in dying and light.

Assonance is often used in combination with alliteration - rave, rage, rage - for musical effect.

Some scholars (I.V. Arnold) suggest the term “vocalic alliteration”, which doesn’t seem to be valid, as the repeated vowel sounds are seldom at the beginning of the successive words. The much quoted line of Charles Churchill: “Apt alliteration’s artful aid” is not a good example, since only the first two sounds [a] have the same value.

Assonance also differs from rhyme. Rhyme is a similarity of vowel and consonant sounds. Lake and fake demonstrate rhyme, lake and fate are assonant.

Assonance is used:

a) to enrich ornament within the line: e.g. Strips of tinfoil winking like people.

b) It is applied as a common substitution for end – rhyme.

e.g. Constantly risking absurdity

and death

whenever he performs

above the heads

of his audience

The poet like an acrobat

climbs on rime

to a high wire of his own making

And balances on eyebeams

above a sea of faces (Lawrence Ferlinhetti).

Assonance is observed in death and heads, performs and audience, making and faces, rime and eyebeams.

c) It serves to give a sense of fluidity to the verse (in other words, it makes a verse relaxed and graceful).

d) Assonance gives the poet more flexibility, as it does not so much determine the structure or form of a poem.

IV. RHYME [′raІm] means the repetition of a certain combination of consonant and vowel sounds: a stressed vowel is followed by the same sounds, for example, rain/lane, table/fable, hint/tint.

According to the degree and manner of the phonetic similarity, rhymes can be classified into perfect and imperfect.

Perfect rhymes are characterized by the identity of vowel and following consonant sounds (seem/team). Perfect rhymes can be classified according to their stress:

• masculine rhymes - monosyllabic words (down-town) and words accented on the last syllable (domain – remain);

• feminine rhymes – words accented on the last but one syllable (error- terror; Latin-satin);

• dactylic rhymes are those in which the stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed ones (battery – flattery).

Imperfect rhymes are those in which the phonetic identity is not complete. They can be of different kinds.

• vowel rhymes, i.e. matching vowel sounds (shake –hate);

• consonant rhymes, i.e. matching consonant sounds (tale-tool);

• semirhyme, i.e. a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word (bend –ending);

• eye-rhyme, i.e. the identity of letters, but different sound (wood-flood, love-prove);

• compound rhymes (better- forget it; spirit-near it).

According to their position in the verse lines, rhymes can be classified into end-rhymes and internal rhymes.

Cf. a) Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough (end-rhyme).

b) And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers (internal rhyme).

Rhyme is used:

1. to accentuate speech rhythms by creating sound patterns at some intervals;

2. to unify a poem, to link one concept to another thus helping to determine the structure of a poem;

3. to enhance sound rather than sense; to achieve melodic effect;

4. to avoid monotony (imperfect rhymes);

5. to make lines easily memorable.

Rhyme is not an essential feature of poetry. Notable types of unrhymed verse are blank verse (found in W. Shakespeare’s plays and in J. Milton’s epic poems) and free verse, which is popular with modern poets.

V. RHYTHM [′rІðәm]. The flow of speech presents an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. The pattern of interchange of strong and weak segments is called rhythm. If there is stable recurrence of stressed and unstressed segments, the text is perceived as an example of poetry. The most important quality of poetry is its regular rhythm.

In a verse line, the smallest recurrent segment, consisting of one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed ones is called foot. The structure of foot determines the metre, i.e. the type of poetic rhythm of the line.

Metre is an ideal phenomenon, characterized by unchangeability. Rhythm is flexible. It appears as a result of interaction between the ideal metrical law and the natural phonetic properties of the given language material. The attributes of rhythm also include continuity, proportion, pattern, etc.

The types of metrical foot:

1. trochee (choree) _/ _

2. iambus _ _/

3. dactyl _/ _ _

4. amphibrach _ _/ _

5. anapest _ _ _/

How to scan verse lines:

1. The flower that smiles today b) I went to the garden of love

Tomorrow dies. And saw what I never had seen.

_ _/ | _ _/ | _ _/ _ _/ _ | _ _/ _ | _ _ /

_ _/ | _ _/ iambus _ _/ _ | _ _/ _ | _ _/ amphibrach

Metrical or accented rhythm is incidental in prose. It is difficult to perceive it. The most servable rhythmical patterns in prose are based on the use of certain stylistic devices such as enumeration, repetition, parallel construction, etc.

e.g. He’d never be coarse. He’d never try anything unpleasant. He’d never fumble at you.

In poetry rhythm a) gives a distinct beat to a line; b) brings order and shape into it; c) intensifies the expressiveness of poetry; d) contributes to the general sense, e.g. Only a man harrowing clods

In a slow silent walk

With an old horse that stumbles and nods

Half asleep as they stalk. (Th. Hardy).The effect of this example is to create the movement of a slow old horse and an old man as they plod along ploughing the fields. The slow measured rhythm can be easily identified. The long vowel sounds and the single syllable words contribute to the lingering effect of the words and the rhythm in the lines.

Exercise

Identify the kind of phonetic stylistic device in the following sentences and state their functions:

1. The moan of the doves in immemorial elms

And murmuring of innumerable bees (A.Tennyson).

2. O Mother, I implore

Buckets of blessing on my burning head (R.Lowell).

3. “BlOOD” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch doctors,

“Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,

Harry the uplands,

Steal all the cattle

Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,

Bing.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM”.

A roaring, epic, rag-time tune

From the mouth of the Congo

To the Mountains of the Moon (V.Lindsay).

4. Wind whines and whines the shingle,

The crazy pierstakes groan,

A senile sea numbers each single

Slimesilvered stone.

From whining wind and colder

Gray sea I wrap him warm

And touch his trembling fine-boned shoulder

And boyish arm (J. Joyce).

5. Seoul Again Scraps Sale of Its Stake in Steelmaker (International Herald Tribune).

6. ‘Slishy – sloshy – slishy – sloshy!’ The water came pouring down and soaked all the children (E.Blyton).

7. Mine by the right of the white

Mine by the royal seal! (E.Dickinson).

8. This is the prayer, inchoate and unfinished,

for you, my love, my loss, my lesion(…) (D.Gioia).

9. Bessy took a cushion, put it at the top of the slide, and pushed off. Down went, whizzzzzzz! (E.Blyton).

10. She makes her way along the lake (D.Gioia).

11. ‘Father’ is rather vulgar, my dear. The word ‘Papa’, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism, are very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism (Ch. Dickens).

12. The engine began to chuff-chuff-chuff and moved out of the station (E.Blyton).

13. Second year students will require:

Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart

Gadding with Ghoules by Gilderoy Lockhart

Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart

Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart

Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart

Wandering with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart

Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart (J.Rowling).

14. In the morning light a line

Stretches forever. There my unlived life

Rises, and I resist,

Clinging to the steps of the throne (L.Simpson).

15. Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade.

He bravely breach’d his boiling bloody breast (W.Shakespeare).

16. And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see (E.A.Poe).

17. In happy homes he saw the light

Of household fires gleam warm and bright (H.Longfellow).

18. Far off the purl of motors, nearer the chirp of crickets, the peculiar long drawn ee-ee-ee of tree frogs. I didn’t think I was going to like those sounds any more

19. FOR THE

FIRST TIME EVER,

FLY NON-STOP

FROM SINGAPORE

TO NEW YORK ( Time).

20. The rusty spigot

sputters,

utters

splutter,

spatters a smattering of drops,

gashes wider;

slash,

splatters,

spurts,

finally stops sputtering

and plash!

Gushes rushes splashes

clear water dashes (E.Merriam).

21. “I’ll get you for this!” shouted Mrs. Twit. <…> “I’ll swish you to a swazzle!” “I’ll swash you to a swizzle! I’ll gnash you to a gnozzle! I’ll gnosh you to a gnazzle!” (R. Dahl).

Theme 3. Graphic means of stylistics

1. Graphon

2. Emphatic Punctuation

3. Absence of Punctuation Marks

4. Peculiar Arrangement of Texts

Writing has in a way limited our capacity to evaluate phonetic properties of texts.

English spelling practically does not reproduce phonetic peculiarities of speech, therefore various graphic means are widely used for that purpose.

I. GRAPHON[grә′fən] is intentional violation of the spelling of a word (or word combination) used to reflect its authentic pronunciation (V.A. Kukharenko). Graphons are mainly found in prose – they are applied in contemporary advertising, mass media and fiction.

According to their function, graphons can be subdivided into two groups:

1. those which show deviations from Standard English pronunciation;

2. those which reproduce some peculiarity in emphatic pronouncing words or phrases.

a) The first group of graphons indicates non-standard pronunciation, caused either by temporary or by permanent factors.

Temporary factors include:

• ignorance of the discussed theme; e.g. In “Harry Potter” a character from the magic world who has never used a telephone, calls it “fellytone”.

• intoxication; e.g. “He is drunk”. “No, shir. He is ash shober, ash you or I”.

• tender age; e.g. aminals instead of animals. The pronunciation of the suffix ing as [in] is a peculiar feature of children’s speech.

Permanent factors are:

• speech problems such as stammer (e.g. The b-b-b-b-bas-tud – he seen me c-c-c-c-com-ing), lisp (e.g. Thith ith a bad pieth of bithnith, thith ith);

• social and territorial background, etc.

Most graphons show features of territorial or social dialect of the speaker. They are meant to characterize the speaker as a person of a certain locality, breeding, education and even social standing. Most of the examples so far quoted come from the cockney dialect with its peculiar dropping of “h” (‘at-hat, ‘ope-hope). e.g. She allows that boy of ‘ers to ‘ave it in the ‘ouse. Another famous cockney feature is the substitution of the diphthong ai for the diphthong ei. E.g. Will ye- oo py me f’ them. Well, fank goodness.

b) The second group of graphons includes those graphic means which do not involve violations of the Standard English. They are used to impart expressive force to the utterance, to convey the intensity of stress, to emphasize some syllables, etc.

Variants of pronunciation can be shown in print by changing the type and by spacing of graphemes and of lines.

Changes of the type include:

• italics, which is the simplest way to call attention to an otherwise unemphatic syllable, word or phrase, e.g. “And the cops are looking for him” she said and laughed. It may also be used to show that certain part of the utterance is specially modulated, e.g. Hel-lo, Beatrice! (R.Dahl).

• Bold type gives a word or phrase more than usual emphasis.

• Capitalization (e.g. ARE YOU MAD?) can create an impression of “shouting”. It also shows the importance of some words.

• Discarding of capital letters breaks the pattern of predictability and thus makes a word or a phrase more prominent, e.g. “I shook my head, jesus christ, right enough” (J. Kelman).

Spacing of graphemes and of lines includes:

• doubling which helps to intensify the initial consonant. E.g. “N-no!” sounds more decisive than mere “No”.

• Multiplication imparts intensity to the utterance, especially in commands e.g.Rrree-sign! Rrree-tire! (R.Dahl).

• Hyphenation reproduces uttering each syllable or generally part of a word as a phonetically independent unit, in retarded tempo, e.g. Ab-so-lu-tely!

• Missing blanks between words can be used to emphasize quickness of speech tempo, e.g. “Yessir!”

Graphons are very good at conveying the atmosphere of authentic live communication, but they can give the reader only limited opportunities for judging the phonemic and prosodic aspects of oral speech.

2. Emphatic punctuation

Punctuation marks play an important role in emotional and expressive intensifying an utterance. They can be used to show the author’s attitude towards the things and phenomena described, to arrest the reader’s attention, to indicate some concealed meanings, etc.

Thus, close succession of exclamatory sentences conveys a very strong upsurge of emotions. For example, Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! (A. Ginsberg). When the exclamation mark is placed at the end of a sentence, the nature of which is not exclamatory, it may express the speaker’s irony. If it is used to close questions, it conveys extreme emotions, e.g. What on earth are you doing! Stop!

Dots can indicate emotional pauses in speech caused by doubt, excitement or any other feelings depriving the speakers of the ability to express themselves in terms of language. E.g. That’s to say…you understand…the dusk…the strain…waiting…I confess... I imagined…for a second…

Emotional pauses can also be indicated by the dash. “Please – not that”. The dash standing before the word makes this word conspicuous and being isolated, it becomes the peak of the whole utterance. E.g. Emily Dickinson’s poems bristle with odd dashes and capitalization:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – Too?

Then there’s a pair of us

Each word and each meaning appear before the reader’s eye as if it were new.

Dashes also mark sharp turns in thought, an unexpected comment, or a dramatic qualification, e.g. That was the end of the matter – or so we thought.

Curious instances of combination of graphic means can be found in contemporary English and American books.

E.g. “Appeeeee Noooooyeeeeerrr! (Happy New Year).

e.g. “Theeeeey’re OFF” screamed Bagman (J. Rowling).

e.g. BANG!!!???***!!! (A.A. Milne).

E.E.Cummings, an American poet, is well-known for his use of many eccentric deviations, such as discarding of capital letters, unusual spacing and punctuation.

He often uses capital letters in the middle (“SLOwLy”) or at the end of words (stopS) for making readers look carefully at the individual word (and even letters in the word.

III. ABSENCE OF PUNCTUATION MARKS. It is typical of contemporary authors to break up traditional graphic designs of the preceding ages and to look for peculiar, unexpected ways of conveying their ideas. For example, T.S. Eliot wrote “Defense of the Islands” without any full stops and thus combined a great number of events, lives and centuries into an undivided unity. Absence of full stops in James Joyce is applied to convey a stream of consciousness. E.g. a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose they’re just getting up in China now combing their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing their angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarm clock next door at cock shout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can dose off 12345 what kind of flowers are those they invented like stars the wallpaper in Lombart street was much nice <…>

IV. Reculiar graphic arrangement of a line or a discourse

The correspondence between the form and the contents of a text produces a significant stylistic effect. The attempt to tie up peculiar graphic forms of a text and its contents is observed, for example in the poem “Easter Wings” by English poet George Herbert. The idea of this piece is emphasized by the arrangement of lines which reminds of the angel’s wings.

Exercise

Identify the type of the following graphic means and state their functions:

1. “Is anyone being hurt?” he called. – “Meeeeeeeeeeee!” screeched the owl again, and Jo nearly fell out of the window with fright! (E.Blyton).

2. “Good efening. I am from Copenhagen, and I would like to sing for you a song”(…) The international contingent tentatively joined in with an extraordinary ragbag of accents .

So vear ye vell, my own true loff

Ven I return united ve vill be

It’s not the leafing off Liffapool that leef me

But my darlink when I finger you

(P. McCarthy).

3. Tim-buk-tu. By now, even the sound of the word was enough to make him happy: the combination of vowels and consonants rarely failed to stir him in the deepest parts of his soul (P.Auster).

4. “Half of Gwenda attended to making the requisite noises of condolence, sympathy and understanding .

-Yes… Of course…Dreadful for you…Most natural…Yes, nursing homes are like that… Of course …(A.Christie).

5. “Boom, boom, boom!” The sound came nearer still. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

(E.Blyton).

6. –Wangoballwime?

- Sorry? said Cho.

- D’you – d’you want to go to the ball with me? said Harry (J. Rowling).

7. Moon-Face began to shake with fright.

“I’ ve g-g-g-got you all into a t-t-t-terrible fix!” he said, in a trembling voice.

“Here we are – stuck in a l-l-l-land where there is everything we w-w-w-want- and the only thing we w-w-w-want is to go away! (E.Blyton).

8. (while you and i have lips and voices which

are for kissing and to sing with

who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch

invents an instrument to measure Spring with? (e.e.cummings).

9. ‘Twas dis eye, massa – de lef” eye – jis as you tell me,” and here it was his right eye that Negro indicated (E. A. Poe).

10. For God’s sake! - quick! - quick! - put me to sleep – or, quick! - waken me! - quick!- I say to you that I am dead!” (E. A. Poe).

11. –How old are you, Mr. Spykes?

- Sheventy four.

12. At last Norbert was going…going…gone. (J.Rowling).

13. “And whad are you going do do?’ said Neville, mopping his bleeding nose with his sleeve (J.Rowling).

14. “Yoooou!” she howled, her eyes popping at the sight of the man.

‘Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!”

“I said – shut – UP!” roared the man (J.Rowling).

15. “Presidunk’, said a voice and both parents turned to stare at Florentyna(…). ‘Pres-i-dent’, said Abel slowly and firmly. ‘Presidunk’, insisted Florentyna (J.Archer).

16. “I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a

witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But - and here comes the big “but” – it is not impossible (R.Dahl).

17. ‘You c-can’t – Dad told you you’re not to do m-magic –he said, he’ll chuck you out of the house – and you haven’t got anywhere else to go – You haven’t got any friends to take you –’

‘Jiggery pokery!’ said Harry in a fierce voice. ‘Hocus pocus…Squiggly wiggly’.

‘MUUUUUUM!’ howled Dudley, tripping over his feet as he dashed back towards the house. ‘MUUUUM! He’s doing you know what!’ (J.Rowling).

18. ‘M-m-morning, Harry’, yawned Tonks(…) ‘I’ve b-b-been up all night’, she said with another shuddering yawn (J.Rowling).

19. “That is one of the people from the Land of Bad Tempers”, said Watzisname in a whisper. “They are losing their tempers, you know, whenever anything goes wrong. I just simply DAREN’T knock at the door and ask where Silky is” (E.Blyton).

20. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one…

single… more… inch…of…curve… Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell (R.Bach).

21. “I am having my breakfast this morning,” cried The Grand High Witch, “and I am looking out of the vindow at the beach, and vot am I seeing? I am asking you, vot am I seeing? I am seeing a rrree-volting sight! I am seeing hundreds, I am seeing thousands of rrroten rrree-pulsive little children playing on the sand! It is putting me rrright off my food! Vye have you not got rrrid of them?” she screamed (R.Dahl).

22. “NOOOOOOO!”

He was on his knees again, his face buried in his hand, his brain aching as though someone had been trying to pull it from his skull.

“I told you to empty yourself of emotion!”

“I – am – making – an – effort,” he said through clenched teeth (J.Rowling).

Theme 3. Stylistic classification of the english vocabulary

I. The Main Layers of the English Vocabulary

II. Literary (Elevated) Words

II. 1. Common Literary (Bookish) Words

II. 2. Poetic Words

II. 3. Archaisms

II. 4. Barbarisms

II. 5. Terms

III. Colloquial (Degraded) Words

III. 1. Common Colloquial Words

III. 2. Slang

III. 3. Jargonisms

III. 4. Vulgar Words

1. The main layers of the english vocabulary.

The word stock of the English language is divided into three layers: neutral, literary, and colloquial ones.

Neutral words possess no stylistic connotation and are suitable for any communicative situation. Literary words are used in official, scientific, poetic messages, in authorial speech, descriptions, considerations. Colloquial words are employed in non-official everyday communication, informal letters, diaries, certain passages of memoirs, in the types of discourse copying everyday oral communication (in the dialogue of a prose work).

Literary and colloquial words can be further divided into common and special vocabulary.

Common bulk is known to and used by most native speakers in generalized formal or informal communication. Special vocabulary serves particular communicative purposes and is subdivided into subgroups. Literary special vocabulary falls into: a) poetic words; b) archaisms; c) barbarisms; d) terms.

II. LITERARY (elevated) words “have their upper and lower ranges. The lower range of literary words approaches the neutral layer and has an obvious tendency to pass into that layer” (I.R. Galperin). These are slightly bookish words used automatically by cultivated speakers (e.g. prevail, inherent, activity are not used by uneducated speakers). The upper range can be found in words, used in poetry and high prose (e.g. defunct, steed). The lines of demarcation between these ranges as well as between groups of words are blurred.

II. 1. Common literary words (CLW) form a significant layer of the literary stratum. They are chiefly used in writing or in such types of oral communication as public speeches, official negotiations, etc. CLW are either formal, sometimes high-flown synonyms of neutral words (e.g. proceed – continue, respond – answer, parent – father), or popular terms of science (e.g. claustrophobia, ruminant). CLW are mostly loan words, Latin or Greek. The combination of neutral or colloquial words and their common literary counterparts often produces comic effect e.g. “‘I say, Owl,’ said Christopher Robin, “isn’t this fun? I am on an island! (…) “The flood- level has reached an unprecedented height”. “The who?” “There’s a lot of water about,” explained Owl.

To use CLW instead of their current substitutes in an unsuitable context challenges attention and gives the impression that the writer is a foreigner who has learnt the language only from books.

II. 2. Poetic words are characterized by the highest degree of elevation.

In the 17-19^th centuries these words were widely used in poetry to contribute to its emotional appeal. Poeticisms were synonymous with neutral words (e.g. steed meant horse, quoth – said, woe – sorrow). This group of words includes: a) pure poeticisms: e.g. brine, anarch, b) archaic words (e.g. delve – dig, commix – mix, coil – disturbance), c) historical words (e.g. argosy, cask).

Poetic words are unsuitable for plain prose. Nowadays they are not favoured even by poets. In contemporary British and American literature these words are sometimes used in combination with neutral ones to achieve ironic effect.

e.g. In fumes like that you’d need a protective mask to check your car oil, let alone sleep. My eyes are watering, and there must be less than a fifty-fifty chance of my surviving the night. I pull the sheets over my head and slip off into a deep and toxic slumber (P.McCarthy). slumber (n. poetic) sleep.

II. 3. Archaic words.

Archaism is an old word which is either completely or practically out of use in present day language. According to the reasons of their disappearance from the language, archaic words can be divided into:

a) historical archaisms, i.e. words whose referent has already disappeared (e.g. vassal, yeoman, etc.);

b) archaic words proper, i.e. words which have been replaced by their synonyms (e.g. brethren – brothers, deem – think).

I.R.Galperin distinguishes three stages in the aging process, according to which three subgroups are singled out:

a) obsolescent words, or old-fashioned words gradually passing out of general use (e.g. wilt, thy, thee, art, thou);

b) obsolete words which are no longer used but can be still recognized (e.g. methinks – it seems to me);

c) archaic words proper, i.e. words which can not be recognized (a losel – a lazy fellow, kine – pl. cow).

Thus, the beginning of the aging process of a word is marked by decrease in its usage.

Archaisms are most frequently found in poetry, fiction, legal and ritual contexts, in dialectal speech. The use of archaic words in fiction, for instance in dialogues of historical novels, seeks to evoke the style of older speech, hence the flavour of the previous centuries. E.g. ‘Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian child, - ha?’ (N.Hawthorne). However, archaization does not mean complete reproduction of the speech of past epochs; it is effected by the application of separate archaic words. The abundant use of archaisms in contemporary literature seems strange and unsuitable. Even when used to give colour to conversation in historical romances, archaic style is more likely to irritate the reader than to please him. Nevertheless, writers with a strong feel for the language may on occasion deliberately use archaic words to emphasize a certain point or to create a mood. Some archaisms may count as inherently funny words and are used for humorous effect. In poetry archaisms highlight the general colouring of elevation. The colouring may be described as both poetic and solemn. In legal and ritual writing and speech archaisms are used as part of a specific jargon (e.g. heretofore, hereunto, thereof) or formula (e.g. With this ring I thee wed). They produce the colouring of solemnity.

II.4. Barbarisms are words of foreign origin which have not entirely been assimilated into the English language. They bear the appearance of a borrowing, e.g. viva voce, a propos, beau monde, etc.

Barbarisms and foreign words are used to supply local colour; to reproduce speech of a local inhabitant.

Barbarisms differ from foreign words:

II. 5. Terms are words denoting objects, processes, phenomena of science, humanities, technique (e.g. vector, palatalization, pachyderms, etc). The denotative meanings of terms are clearly defined. A proper term is monosemantic and has no synonyms. They belong to the scientific style, but may as well appear in other styles. In professional spheres the term performs no expressive or aesthetic function. In non-professional spheres (imaginative prose, newspaper texts, everyday oral speech) popular terms produce different stylistic effects, for instance humorous one: “Here we were, perilously at sea, final extinction a daily possibility, and all xestobium rufo-villosum could think about was sex” (J.Barnes). They can make speech sound “scientific-like”, or create some kind of professional atmosphere.

III. COLLOQUIAL (degraded) words are considered to be more emotionally coloured than literary ones. They also have their upper and lower ranges. The words of upper range (common colloquial ones) can easily pass into the neutral layer. This part of the English vocabulary is used by most native speakers in generalized informal communication. Special colloquial words constitute the medial and the lowest ranges, and are characterized by different degree of their stylistic degradation and social acceptance. There are three main approaches to the classification of special colloquial words. Some scholars (H.W. Fowler) maintain that jargon is the most applied term including argot, cant, slang, dialect, etc. Others (V.A. Homyakov) consider slang to be a generic term for such notions as jargonisms, argot, professionalisms and vulgarisms. Still other linguists (I.R.Galperin, Y.M.Skrebnev) tend to distinguish slang from jargon, on the one hand, and from vulgarisms, on the other. This manual acquaints the learner with the third widely accepted point of view.

III. 1. Common colloquial words constitute a part of the Standard English. They have a slight degree of familiarity or informality and mark the message in which they are used as non-official, conversational. These words are not homogeneous: some colloquialisms are close to slang, jargonisms, etc. Other words approach the neutral bulk so much that their degradation remains unobserved in the act of speaking.

Colloquialisms include:

1. colloquial words proper, which have no one-word counterparts in the neutral and literary sphere, e.g. molly-coddle – an effeminate man;

2. phonetic variants of neutral words:

• contractions of words, e.g. hippo <hippopotamus, fest < festival;

• contractions of word combinations, e.g. s’long < so long, c’mon < come on, gonna < going;

• contractions of auxiliary and modal verbs, e.g. she’ll, there’s, he’s gone.

Such words are markers of colloquial speech; they are used to save articulatory efforts.

2. words which change in colloquial speech both their grammatical form and their lexico-stylistic meaning by means of:

   • affixation, e.g. Scotty < Scot, piggy < pig;

   • word composition, e.g. Beatle-mania;

   • conversion, e.g. to angel –to support a film, play, music group by giving money, to bag – to take something without permission;

   • clipping and affixation, e.g. alkie < alcoholic.

3. words, changing their lexical and lexico-stylistic meaning, without any grammatical changes:

   • interjections, which serve emotive and expressive functions in informal conversations, e.g. Good Heavens! My God! Good God!

   • words, which have both denotative and connotative meanings but connotative meaning prevails, e.g. guts 1. (inform.) courage and determination; 2. the organs inside your body.

   • colloquial meanings of polysemantic words. Their primary meanings put them in the neutral sphere, while their figurative meanings pertain to the colloquial sphere. E.g. the word wallflower means both a sweet-smelling plant and someone at a party who is not asked to dance.

III. 2. Slang is a group of informal, nonstandard words and phrases. They are generally shorter lived than the expressions of ordinary colloquial speech. Slang appears for a number of reasons. It tends to satisfy a variety of emotional and intellectual needs of people:

1. It is used for the pleasure of novelty or being in the fashion;

2. It emphasizes the ridiculous aspects of things, e.g. idiot box < TV set, fender-bender < careless driver;

3. Being alien to pomposity, it helps to reduce solemnity, pain or tragedy, e.g. meat wagon – an ambulance;

4. It eases the way for smoother social contacts by putting the speaker in tune with his companions and including the sense of intimacy;

5. It increases the store of terse and striking words and provides the vocabulary for new shades of meaning.

Slang occupies the middle ground between the standard and informal words accepted by the general public and the special words and expressions known only to comparatively small social subgroups (jargonisms). It can serve as a bridge or a barrier either helping words that have been used by a specific group of people to enter the language of the general public, or preventing them from doing so. Thus American slang has provided such words as mob, cowboy, racketeer, movie etc. for standard or informal speech.

Experts maintain that now in the UK there are at least 90 000 slang words and phrase in common use, 10% of which can be traced to what we eat and drink, e.g. cake hole – mouth, berries – money, jam pies – eyes.

Replacement of worn-out words by new ones makes slang very rich in synonyms. Lexicologists say that there are at least 100 words to express the idea of a pretty girl, e.g. cookie, wren, hot number, sugar, etc.

The linguistic processes forming slang are the same as those by which other words in the language change their form or meaning. They typically result from playing on words, renaming things and actions, inventing new words, misapplying the old ones. Some of these are employment of metaphor (e.g. bag < an unattractive woman, fox < an attractive one), metonymy (e.g. brain < a good student, salt < a sailor), simile (e.g. as daft as a brush < very silly), distortion of sounds in words (e.g. Madchester), clipping and abbreviation (e.g. Manc < a person from Manchester), generalization and specialization. The English word trip is an example of a term that first became specialized to mean an experience someone has being affected by a drug, such as LSD. Then it generalized again to mean any experience that is amusing and very different from normal.

III. 3. Jargon words are emotive and expressive words used by limited groups of people united either professionally (professionalisms) or socially (jargonisms proper).

Professionalisms are formed according to the existing word-building patterns or present existing words in new meanings, e.g. hoofer < tap-dancer, baby of the house - the youngest member of Parliament, sewing machine < machine gun. Covering the field of special professional knowledge which is semantically limited, they offer a vast variety of synonymic choices for naming one and the same professional item, e.g. box, toaster, fuzzbal toast <computer.

Sometimes professionalisms come into popular use. E.g. early aviators used the term bail out for ‘getting out of an airplane that was in trouble’. Today someone can bail out of any kind of troublesome or annoying situation (a bad marriage).

Jargonisms proper are used by definite social groups (age, ethnic, criminal, hobby or special interest group), e.g. junker – drug addict, number three – cocaine.

A peculiar place is occupied by “cant”, a secret lingo of society’s underworld of criminals. The striving for secrecy was perhaps only the primary reason why it appeared. Nowadays, the words suggest a common bond of understanding and a special relationship between those who use them. Such words would not normally work their way into general use, but the exploitation of crime plots by films and television has helped to popularize them. Nearly everyone knows that a hit man is a hired killer and a wise man is a trusted mob insider. Gangs use the word turf for the territory they control, etc.

Cant words are for the most part ordinary English words with transferred meanings. E.g. the phrase No soap means that somebody’s plan didn’t work.

Jargonisms can not be confined to cant words only. In Britain and in the USA almost any social group of people has its own jargon.

III. 4. Vulgar words. This stylistically lowest group consists of words which are considered too offensive for polite usage. There are different degrees of vulgarity in swear-words. A lesser degree is presented by expletives such as bloody, damn, to hell, son of a bitch. Expletives give vent to strong emotions, mainly annoyance, anger, vexation, etc. They have lost most of their shock power nowadays.

A greater degree of vulgarity is observed in obscene words, also known as taboo or four-letter words, e.g. shit. According to V. A. Maltzev, only eight of them, in fact, consist of just four letters; one refers to a part of the body; five pertain to the excretory functions; two deal with sexual matters.

“The history of vulgarisms reflects the history of social ethics. In Middle ages and down into the 16^th century indecent words were accepted in oral speech and after Caxton even admitted to the printed page” (V.A.Kukharenko). In the 18-19^th centuries the morality forbade the use of such words as seem quite harmless to us, e.g. bloody, cursed, damn, hell of, etc. In the 20^th century the Boston Globe kept typing out the full name of the Boston Redevelopment Authority because the editors thought it would be inappropriate to use the acronym BRA in a family newspaper. Nowadays there is very little that is forbidden in the media. Many words once considered taboo are now used nearly everywhere – on TV, on the radio, or in print (e.g. the colloquial expression for “bovine excrement”). Still, there are SOME words which are forbidden.

Exercises

I. Analyse the type and function of literary (elevated) words in the following examples:

1. Certain it is that an arquebuss was called for from below (H.Melville).

arquebuss=harquebus n. an early type of portable gun supported on

a tripod or on a forked rest.

2. . Even now, as I enter the valley of the shadow of death, my thoughts bog down in the gunk of yore (P.Auster).

gunk (n.informal) any substance that is dirty or unpleasant;

of yore (literary) a long time ago.

3. I eat apples all morning and afternoon until it is time for my solitary meal in the university restaurant up by the fac du droit (w.Boyd).

fac du droit (French) law department.

4. – Hark! - sure we left no soul above?

- No soul, Excellenza (H.Melville).

Hark! (poetic) used to tell someone to listen.

Excellenza (Italian) - a way of talking to or about people who hold

high positions in the state or the church.

5. Anobium domesticum, by seven votes to none, resolved not to pupate until after Disembarkation (j.Barnes).

anobium domesticum - a woodworm;

disembarkation n. getting off the ship;

pupate v. (technical) - to become a pupa.

6. Pipit sate upright in her chair

Some distance from where I was sitting (T.S.Eliot).

7. What was so special about cloven-footed ruminants, one asked oneself? Why should the camel and the rabbit be given second-class status? The swan, the pelican, the heron, the hoopoe: are these not some of the finest species? Yet they were not awarded the badge of cleanness. Why round on the mouse and the lizard – which had enough problems already, you might think – and undermine their self-confidence further? (J.Barnes).

ruminant (technical) an animal such as a cow that has several

stomachs and eats grass.

8. Animal of a speculative bent began to propound rival selection principles based on beast size or utility rather than mere number; but Noah loftily refused to negotiate (J.Barnes).

bent (n.formal) special natural skill;

propound (v.formal) to suggest an idea, explanation etc. for other

people to consider.

9. Indeed, she wrote witty and indignant reviews of novels which took writing for a paradigm of life. She wrote about the metaphysical claustrophobia of the Shredded Wheat Box on the Shredded Wheat Box getting smaller ad infinitum (A.S.Byatt).

claustrophobia (n. med.) a morbid dread of being in confined

spaces;

ad infinitum (adv. Latin) continuing or repeated without ever

ending.

III. Analyse the type and function of colloquial (degraded) words in the following examples:

1. ‘Don’t you pack no rod?’

‘Not on that kind of a job.’(R.Chandler).

rod n. US slang a pistol or revolver.

2. ‘Imagine cheating a dear old lady out of so much money.’

‘Abso-bloody-lutely, Father Neil(…)’ (N.Boyd).

3. ‘She don’t hear no shots though, inside the house.’

‘That must have been a big disappointment,’ I said.

‘Yeah. A nifty. Remind me to laugh on my day off’ (R.Chandler).

nifty adj. colloq. clever, adroit.

4. There are screws, I mean warders, involved in the brisk trade in drugs, I can supply their numbers if I am guaranteed protection. Anything can be had, uppers and downers, tranqs, horse, crack, you name it – not that you, of course, your worship, are likely to be familiar with these terms from lower depth, I have only learned them myself since coming here (J. Banville).

screw (BrE. sl.) a word for a prison officer, used especially by prisoners;

uppers (plur. sl.) illegal drugs that make you feel happy and give you a lot

of energy;

downer (n. informal) a drug that makes you feel very relaxed or sleepy;

tranq (n.inform) a drug used to reduce nervous anxiety, makes you calm;

horse (old-fashioned slang) heroin;

crack (slang) a very pure form of the drug cocaine that some people take

illegally for pleasure.

5. Someone at the very top became obsessed with information gathering, and certain of the travellers agreed to act as stool-pigeons. I am sorry to report that ratting to the authorities was at times widespread (J. Barnes).

rat (v. AmE inform) to be disloyal to someone, especially by telling

someone in authority about something wrong that person has done;

stool-pigeon (n. informal) someone especially a criminal, who helps the

police to catch another criminal.

6. Her ex wasn’t a man; he was a neurotic. His exploration of his own psyche had desexed him and we had ended up like squabbling sisters (D.Moggach).

ex (n. informal) someone’s former wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend;

psyche (technical or formal) someone’s mind, or their basic nature, which

controls their attitudes and behavior.

7. Two of the company are larger-than-life Irish women who look as if they might be blues singers, or bouncers. The conversation is revolving around them, whether it wants to or not, and the air is turning blue, with approximately two fecks, three fucks, and a God Almighty to each sentence (P.McCarthy).

8. This guy I’ve been living with: he’s a junkie trying to kick the habit (F.Weldon).

junkie (n. sl) someone who takes dangerous drugs and is dependent on them

9. He grinned back then, a flat white grin without meaning.

‘Whisky sour,’ he told the barman. ‘Shake them fleas outa your pants. Service.’ (R.Chandler).

Shake fleas out of your pants - Hurry up.

Theme 4. Lexico-semantic stylistic devices. Figures of replacement

I. Hyperbole, Meiosis and Litotes

II. Metaphor and Personification

III. Allusion. Antonomasia

IV. Allegory

V. Metonymy and Synecdoche

VI. Irony

VII. Periphrasis and Euphemism

Figures of replacement (tropes) are stylistic devices based on replacing traditional name of a thing by its situational substitute.

I. HYPERBOLE [haІ ′pә:bәli] is an exaggerated statement. It presents a deliberate distortion of proportions and is not meant to be taken literally. Hyperbole may be used due to highly emotional attitude of the speaker towards the subject discussed. e.g. I’ve been on the road longer than asphalt.

His hands dangled a mile out of his sleeves and feet might have served for shovels (W. Irving).

The main sphere of use of hyperbole is colloquial speech. Many colloquial hyperboles are trite: e.g. I nearly died laughing. I’ve told you forty times. He was frightened to death. Such expressions may lose their expressive power due to their frequent use and often come unobserved in the flow of speech: neither the listener, nor sometimes even the speaker notice the exaggeration.

In poetry and prose hyperbole is noticed and appreciated by the reader.

A genuine hyperbole is “exaggeration on a big scale. There must be something illogical in it, something unreal, utterly impossible, contrary to common sense, and even stunning by its suddenness” (Y.M. Skrebnev).

e.g. Dr Johnson drank his tea in oceans (T.B.Macaulay).

Hyperbole is used:

• to serve expressive and emotive purposes;

• to emphasize quantity or quality by exaggerating it; e.g. My aunt is so fat that every time she turns around it’s her birthday. His sister is so skinny, she has to run around in the shower to get wet.

• to produce some humorous effect; e.g. “It must have been that caviar”, he was thinking. “That beastly caviar”. He violently hated caviar. Every sturgeon in the Black Sea was his personal enemy (Al. Huxley).

Hyperbole is often combined with other stylistic devices – metaphor, simile, irony, etc. e.g. He gave me a look that could set asbestos on fire (D. Fransis).

MEIOSIS [maІ ′әυsis], or UNDERSTATEMENT (Gk “make smaller”) consists in intentional diminishing, reducing the real characteristics of the described object (its size, quantity, degree, significance, etc). e.g. She was a little short on serenity (J.Barnes) instead of “she was famous for her violent bad temper”. This is a decent schoolboy (very good).

Meiosis is the opposite of hyperbole but it is often confused with some varieties of hyperbole. According to Y.M.Skrebnev, it is meiosis when the speaker “understates normal or more than normal (large) things”, e.g…Detroit is his idea of a small town (F.S. Fitzgerald). It is hyperbole when the described object is “really small or insignificant and the expression used to denote it strengthens and emphasizes its smallness and insignificance”. E.g. The Bureau of Records was about the size of a tea bag” (R.Chandler).

Meiosis is very common in colloquial English. It is expressed by various linguistic means: I kind of like it. I was half afraid you had forgotten me. The word some can also be used as a meiotic device if it understates the quantity: The place is some distance off (meaning a very long way), or the quality of an object: some legs (wonderful kind of legs).

In fiction meiosis is used:

• to strengthen some characteristics of an object through their apparent weakening;

• to reproduce British reserved manner of speech, e.g. As I walked towards Duncan’s front door I could hear raised voices – a very British expression, born of understatement - let’s be frank and admit that they were screaming at each other at the tops of their voices (J.Archer);

• to produce a humorous effect by emphasizing the contrast between the real state of affairs and the way the speaker perceives and presents it, e.g. I shall never forget the poor old gentleman who once traveled with me on the Channel boat. Only the two of us were on deck as a violent storm was raging. We huddled there for a while, without saying anything. Suddenly a fearful gust blew him overboard. His head emerged just once from the water below me. He looked at me calmly and remarked somewhat casually: “Rather windy, isn’t it?”

LITOTES [laІ ′tәυti:z, ′laІtәti:z] is a specific variety of meiosis, expressing an idea by the negation of the opposite idea. Thus, she is not unattractive means “attractive” but the positive meaning in the negative construction is weaker.

Litotes can be of different kinds:

• a construction with the particle not and the word with affixes expressing a negative, lack or opposite, e.g. She was not unhappy with him. He was not brainless;

• negation of the antonym, e.g. It’s not a stupid answer;

• a construction with the negative particle and preposition “without”, e.g.: A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country (Mark 6:4) (A prophet is honored everywhere except in his country), etc.

Litotes is used in different styles of speech. Its main stylistic functions are:

• it enhances the effect of the expressed ideas through their apparent weakening, e.g. The English poet Thomas Gray showed no inconsiderable powers as a prose writer (Gray was in fact a very good prose writer);

• it is used to impress by moderation, to make statements and judgments sound less categorical, more diplomatic, e.g.: Your decision is not unreasonable. In the style of scientific prose it is employed to show that the author expresses his thoughts with caution, e.g.: It is not uncommon for grammarians to distinguish between language-dependent superficial grammatical forms and the deeper principles underlying them;

• it expresses irony, e.g.: The place Florien runs is not so bad (good). Nobody has been knifed here in a month (R.Chandler). (The ironic effect is achieved by means of the contrast between what is said and what is implied).

II. METAPHOR [′metәfә, -fә:] is transference of names based on similarity between two objects, e.g. The trees are sentinels guarding the road.

Metaphors can be classified semantically, or according to their degree of unexpectedness. Genuine metaphors are unexpected, unpredictable, helping to visualize the picture. Their general stylistic function is not a mere nomination but its expressive characterization. Metaphor is one of the best image-creating devices favoured by poets and writers. Thus, Lawrens Ferlnghetti resorts to metaphors describing his “Big Fat Hairy Vision of Evil”: “Evil is sty in eye of universe”; “Evil is lush with horse teeth”; “Evil is love fried on the spit”.

Trite metaphors are expressions that have been used so often that they have lost the impact they once had. But they have not lost their expressive force altogether, e.g. Her teeth are pearls; a flight of imagination; a burning question, a pillar of the state.

Trite metaphors are sometimes injected with new vigour by supplying a word or a phrase, quite unexpected in the given context. Such metaphors are called mixed, e.g. The cold hand of death quenched her thirst for life. The semantic links between two trite metaphors cold hand of death and thirst for life are disconnected by the word quench – a hand can not quench the thirst.

The structural types of metaphor are:

• simple metaphor which consists of a couple of words, creating a single image, e.g. the water is praying;

• sustained metaphor in which the central image is supplied with additional words bearing some reference to the main word. It can consist of a number of phrases or sentences. E.g. From now on we are just a couple of puppets. They’ll pull the string in London (A.J.Cronin). Sustained metaphor occurs whenever one metaphorical statement, creating an image (puppets) is followed by another containing a continuation or logical development of the previous metaphor (They’ll pull the string in London).

PERSONIFICATION [pәֽsәnІfІ ′keІ∫әn] is a kind of metaphor. It is representation of inanimate objects or abstract ideas as living beings. The abstract ideas are often capitalized and can be substituted by the pronouns he or she.

e.g. Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead,

And hid his face amid a crow of stars (W.B.Yeats).

Personification is often effected by direct address to an inanimate object or an abstract idea,

e.g. Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art (E.A.Poe).

The stylistic purposes of metaphor and personification are different. They are used to impart dynamic force to description, to create an image, to characterize people or objects, to reproduce the particular mood of the viewer.

III. ALLUSION [ә ′ lu:зәn] is a reference to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature. Thus, allusions can be historical, biblical, mythological, literary, etc. “Allusions are based on the accumulated experience and knowledge of the writer who presupposes a similar experience and knowledge in the reader” (I.R.Galperin). Many stylistic devices, being based on allusion, produce one striking effect, e.g.: …on the glossy but not slippery floor, lay a rug as thin as silk and as old as Aesop’s aunt (simile and hyperbole).

Allusions are used:

• to summarize broad, complex ideas or emotions in one quick, powerful image. E.g. to communicate the idea of self-sacrifice one may refer to Jesus, as part of Jesus’ story portrays him dying on the cross in order to save mankind; the idea of righteousness can be well understood by alluding to Noah, who “had no faults and was the only good man of his time” (Genesis, 4:12);

• to broaden the nominal meaning of a word or a phrase into a generalized concept. Thus, the words “banishment” or “rejection” get charged with additional significance by relating to such well-known character as Cain who was cast out of his homeland by God;

• to characterize through analogy. E.g. My poor niece. The genetic lottery had been too kind to her, and she had come up with all the winning numbers. Unlike Tom, who had inherited his shape from the Woods, Aurora was a Glass through and through<…>. Natasha from “War and Peace”, as opposed to her brother’s big-footed, awkward Pierre (P.Auster).

ANTONOMASIA [ֽæntәnә ′meІzІә] is the use of a common name as a proper noun and the use of a proper noun as a common name. The term is derived from the Greek word antonomazein meaning to name differently. A title, epithet, or descriptive phrase may serve as a substitute for a personal name. It includes “speaking names”, characterizing the person meant, e.g. Mr. Snake, Mrs. Dirty Fringe, Mr. Altruism.

There are two types of antonomasia: trite and genuine. In trite antonomasia the association between the name and the qualities of the bearer is a result of long and frequent usage (Don Juan, Brutus). In genuine antonomasia this association is unexpected, fresh, e.g. He’d met Miss Original Pure and planned to marry her (F.Weldon). Antonomasia may serve:

• to designate a member of a group or class;

• to characterize the bearer of the name;

• to create humorous effect, e.g. When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always (R.Rudner).

IV. ALLEGORY [′ælІ (ә)gәri] (from the Greek, “ to speak so as to imply something other) is a kind of metaphor extended through an entire speech so that objects, persons and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text. Allegory is not an individual, particular metaphor within a text; it is a more or less complete tale with profound abstract meaning (moral, social, religious, or political) which is discernible under its surface meaning. Allegory appeals more to imagination.

One of the main features of allegory is the extended and extensive use of personifications by which various abstract ideas are conveyed. E.g. the fable of the fox and the crow.

Allegory in its most common form is also akin to antonomasia. Words denoting abstract notions are used as proper names. The most famous allegory in English is John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, an allegory of Christian salvation represented by the varied experiences of its hero. The names of pilgrims are Christian and Hopeful, the name of the giant is Despair, his wife’s name is Diffidence.

Implying something more important than it seems to denote literally, allegory is widely used in philosophical and satirical novels, for instance “Gulliver’s Travels” by Swift, “Mardi” by Melville.

The allegorical stories told by Christ in the Bible are called parables. The function of allegory in them is to enlighten the hearer by answering questions, suggesting some principles and offering a definite moral.

The application of allegory in fables is even more didactic. Animals, irrational or inanimate beings, for the purpose of moral instruction, act and speak with human interests and passions.

e.g. A Famished Fox saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine. She resorted to all her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them. At last she turned away, hiding her disappointment and saying: “The Grapes are sour and not ripe as I thought”.

V. METONYMY [mІ′tәnІmi] (Gk ‘name change’) is transference of names based on contiguity (nearness) of objects or phenomena, having common grounds of existence in reality. Stylistics deals preferably with varieties of metonymy, revealing a quite unexpected substitution of one word for another or one concept for another. Such substitutions usually impart some expressive force to the utterance.

The types of metonymy-forming relations are:

1. a conspicuous feature can stand for a person, e.g. Across the country we went like the wind followed by a couple of black cars full of moustaches;

2. the name of the author can be used instead of the thing created, e.g. Forster, much more than Lawrence, corresponded to Mrs. Smith’s ideal of the English novel;

3. names of tools instead of names of actions, e.g. The pen is mightier than the sword;

4. the material instead of the thing made of it, e.g. The marble spoke;

5. the source of action instead of the action, e.g. Give every man thine ear and few thy voice.

6. (in advertising) the desired effect (beauty, happiness) instead of the product, e.g. Buy beauty for 30£.

This enumeration can be continued.

SYNECHDOCHE [sІ ′nekdәki] is a kind of metonymy. It consists in using the name of a part to stand for the whole or vice versa. E.g. he came into the bedroom, there were two sleeping heads. The generic name may stand for its constituent, e.g. Someone has crammed dead wildlife up the exhaust of my car (wildlife<a bird).

Synecdoche is also observed when the singular is used instead of the plural and vice versa, e.g. He was a shy man, unable to look me in the eye.

Both metonymy and synecdoche are employed:

• to build up imagery;

• to emphasize the property or an essential quality of the concept;

• to characterize someone indirectly by referring to their single body part or feature;

• to impart any special force to linguistic expression.

VI. IRONY[′aІәrәni] means using a word in a sense that is opposite of its usual meaning for a humorous effect or for emphasis. Irony is transference of names based on the direct contrast of two notions: the notion named and the notion meant. E.g. Oh, brilliantly done! stands for You’ve made a mess of the things; A fine friend you are < you are a bad friend.

There are two kinds of irony: verbal and sustained.

In verbal irony it is always possible to indicate the exact word in which contextual meaning opposes its dictionary meaning. The ironical sense of such utterances is evident to any native speaker,

e.g. Why do you come so soon?

You used to come at ten o’clock

And now you come at noon. Soon < very late

In sustained irony we intuitively feel an ironical message but can not point the exact word in whose meaning there is contradiction between the said and the implied. E.g. The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a moneyed man enter heaven.

The term “irony” is often applied not to the logical or notional but merely to stylistic opposition: using high-flown, elevated linguistic units with reference to socially low or just insignificant topics: e.g. Let’s go to my private thinking parlour (parlour, an old-fashioned bookish word, is used to denote a filthy smelly office of the character).

Irony is used:

• to intensify the evaluative meaning of the utterance;

• to produce humorous effect;

• to express very subtle, almost imperceptible nuances of meaning;

• to show irritation, displeasure, pity, regret, etc, e.g. It was a normal audience. Eighty per cent on day release from the city’s hospitals, with pulmonary wards and ear-nose-and- throat departments getting ticket priority.

VII. PERIPHRASIS [pә′rІfrәsІs] is a stylistic device where the meaning of a word or phrase is indirectly expressed through several or many words.

This way of identifying the object of speech is related to metonymy. The distinction between these two terms is that periphrasis can not be expressed by one linguistic unit; it always consists of more than one word. Thus, calling a gun shooter, the speakers use a trite metonymy, calling it the instrument of law, the instrument of destruction, they use a periphrasis.

This stylistic device has a long history. It was widely used in the Bible. Some occurrences are: born of women- human, those sitting on the surface of the entire earth – humanity, He Who is sitting on the throng – the Deity. Such descriptive phrases were used in place of a name to emphasize the association.

In past epochs periphrasis was also employed to achieve a more elegant manner of expression. Thus, Melville characterizes Renaissance as “a high hour of renovated earth following the second deluge, when the waters of the Dark Ages had dried up and once more the green appeared”.

In contemporary prose periphrasis is used:

• to bring out and intensify some features or properties of the given object, e.g. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers and inebriates (J.K.Jerome) ;

• to avoid monotonous repetition;

• It is also aimed at creating humorous effect.

Periphrasis may be classified into a) figurative and b) logical.

Figurative periphrasis is based either on metaphor or on metonymy. e.g. The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products of fighting in Africa. In this case the extended metonymy stands for wounded.

Logical periphrasis is based on one of the inherent properties or perhaps a passing feature of the object described, e.g. guardian of public order – policeman. The periphrasis that has gained wide currency becomes trite and serves as a universally accepted periphrastic synonym, e.g. better half, flash and blood etc.

EUPHEMISM [′ju:fІmІzәm] (from Greek “good speaking”) is a word that replaces another word of similar but stronger meaning. Words that are obscene, profane or having unpleasant associations are replaced by milder forms. Thus, shoot can be used instead of shit, darn instead of damn etc.

Euphemisms were not often used in the Bible except in the verb to know when referring to the relations of sexes.

The heyday of euphemisms in England was mid-Victorian era, when the dead were departed or no longer living, pregnant women were in an interesting condition. Novelists wrote d-d for damned, trousers were nether garment or even unmentionables or inexpressibles, second wing was used instead of the leg of a fowl. In America rooster came into use in place of cock as a matter of delicacy. According to H.L.Mencken, at one time, even bull was banned as too vulgar for refined ears. In place of it early purists used cow-creature, male-cow and even gentleman-cow. Bitch, ram, boar, stallion, buck and sow went the same way, and there was a day when even mare was prohibited. To castrate became to alter. The delicate female was guarded from all knowledge, and even from all suspicion of evil. To utter aloud in her presence the word shirt was an open insult. Mrs. Trollope, writing in 1832, tells of “a young German gentleman of perfectly good manners” who “offended one of the principal families… by having pronounced the word corset before the ladies of it.” In those sensitive days legs became limbs, breasts – bosoms. Stomach was transformed into a euphemism denoting the whole region from the nipples to the pelvic arch.

In the 20^th century euphemisms were employed less in finding discreet terms for what is indelicate than as a protective device for governments and as a token of a new approach to psychological and sociological problems.

According to their spheres of application, euphemisms may be divided into several groups. They are:

a) political euphemisms. E.g. assassination and aggression can be made more respectable by calling them liquidation and liberation. The poor are substituted by

lower income brackets or underprivileged classes. Every kind of unpleasant event that might call for action by the government is discreetly referred to as an emergency. In 1980-s the campaign for political correctness began. PC was intended to erase any kind of discrimination (racism, sexism, ageism) that exists in language. PC generated new strains of vocabulary and changed some well-known language patterns. E.g. historically disadvantaged group stands for minority; First Nation, Native Americans substitute Red Indians etc. Very often newly-coined words and phrases seem strange, funny and even offensive. E.g. odorously disadvantaged – smelly; vertically challenged – short etc.

b) religious euphemisms. The word devil is often replaced by Old Nick, the dickens, Old Harry, old gentleman.

c) euphemisms associated with the idea of death, e.g. to go west, to depart, to join the majority, to pass away are used instead of to die;

d) euphemisms which denote some unpopular jobs, e.g. rodent operators < rat catchers, meat technologists < butchers; street orderlies < dustmen.

Euphemisms are changeable, as each new word becomes in turn as explicit as its predecessors and has to be replaced. Thus, words jakes, privy, latrine, loo, convenience, john, powder-room, rest-room, etc stand for the same thing.

Exercise

Analyse the following examples of figures of replacement paying special attention to the functions performed:

1. I fetched a glass from the bathroom and poured him enough to tranquillise an elephant (D. Francis).

2. If I describe a four-legged cock with a serpent’s tail, say that it had a very nasty look in its eye and laid a misshapen egg which it then employed a toad to hatch, you’ll understand that it was not the most alluring beast on the Ark (J. Barnes).

3. Revenge is a dish that tastes best when it is cold (m. Puzo).

4. One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.

5. The bouncer went over with a table and smacked into the baseboard with a crash that must have been heard in Denver (R.Chandler).

6. …a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold (Matthew, 13: 3-8).

7. War is not healthy for children and other living things.

8. Arthur lives in a terrace house with a pocket handkerchief garden facing north. You couldn’t grow prize vegetables there (D. Francis).

9. I Lost the world the other day.

Has anybody found?

You’ll know it by a row of stars

Around its forehead bound (E. Dickinson).

10. “Hi, Watzisname!” called Jo, loudly. Watzisname came up. “My name is not Watzisname,” he said a little haughtily(…). “What is it?” asked Bessie. It is Kollamoolitoomarellipawkyrollo,” said Watzisname, very proudly indeed (E.Blyton).

11. She is not unpredictable (A. Christie).

12. There once was a bird with three young to carry across a river. She put the first on her back and, halfway across, asked, “Will you care for me in my old age as I have cared for you?” “Yes, Mama,” said the first bird, and the mother dumped him in the river, called him a liar. Second bird, same result. “Will you care for me in my old age as I have cared for you?” “Yes.” “Liar.” But the third bird, asked if he would care for his mother in her old age as she had cared for him, answered: “I can’t promise that. I can only promise to care for my own children as you have cared for me” (R.Phyllis).

13. ‘There are two rooms here,’ she said, ‘and if you care to poke into them, why we shall be delighted to have you. But I’ll show them to you first, because they are poor, inconvenient rooms, with no running water and miles from the baths’ (D. H. Lawrence).

14. The kid was tireless, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t trip and stub his toe, and when the inevitable accident finally occurred, he let out a shriek of pain that was loud enough to drive the sun from the sky and bring the clouds down to the earth (P. Auster).

15. I wanted Ferdinand to be as I had known him at ten, eleven, twelve– a boy dedicated to riding a bicycle while standing on his head on the saddle – and not in a million years a murderer (D. Francis).

16. Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the gold sad clouds (J.K. Jerome).

17. And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window panes (T.S.Eliot).

18. “Fr Boyd?” The lady’s voice was quiet and, while husky, not unattractive

(N. Boyd).

19. “Look!- there are names on the doors”. “Witch Know-a-Lot.” “The Enchanter Wise-Man.” “Dame Tell-You-All.” “Mrs. Hidden.” “The Wizard Tall-Hat.” (e.Blyton).

20. I am inhabited by a cry

Nightly it flaps out

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this thing

That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity (S. Plath).

21. By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread (Bible).

22. A tear stood in his bright blue eye,

But still he answered, with a sigh,

Excelsior! (H. W. Longfellow).

23. Little Miss Question-All is going to give us some answers (J. Rowling).

24. We turn into the street with a sign saying: “This Way To Hospice”. The first building you see is the morgue, which must be a great comfort to people on their way to the hospice (P. McCarthy).

25. Is Heaven a physician?

They say that He can heal (E.Dickinson).

26. The German couple at the table next to us – a heavy make-up and a Des Lynam moustache – look like low-budget Hamburg porno stars, whose best years are behind them (P. McCarthy).

27. Memory is a crazy woman that hoards coloured rags and throws away food

(A.O’Malley).

28. We lived in the industrial north- west, in Warrington, where the air tasted of detergent from the soap-powder factory, so at least you knew it was clean (P. McCarthy).

29. The skies can’t keep their secret!

They tell it to the hills –

The hills just tell the orchards –

And they the daffodils (E. Dickinson).

30. “Where the man himself?” I said. “Did you not hear? He’s in hospital. They don’t know whether he’ll do or not. What did you want to see him about?” “Just to say hello. And to tell him the article will be in the next issue”. “A lot of good that’ll do him” (B.Mac Laverty).

31. His meal flew off into the air, escaping along with every other bird on the island (P. Auster).

32. Her memory was a hotel – where ideas came and went like transient guests, without leaving their address behind (e. Wharton).

33. When I arrived I was welcomed by a mild-mannered, smiley man with a faraway look in his eye, as though he were watching a particularly pleasing spider on the wall behind my head (P. McCarthy).

34. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.

35. She told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next Door’s problem with her daughter (J.Rowling).

36. Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break

through, the coal to break into fire,

The atom to be split (R. Jeffers).

37. They sat in front of cappuccinos in an unassuming coffee bar.

38. “I feel like an old sock. But at least I can die happy now”.

“Don’t talk like that. They are going to fix you up and make you better.

“Sure. And next year I am going to run for president” (P.Auster).

39. He grinned, showing me a lot of cut-rate dental work (R.Chandler).

40. A man said to the universe,

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”(S. Crane).

41. All the world knows the story of the tempest-tossed voyager who, coming upon a strange coast, and seeing a man hanging in chains, hailed it with joy as the sign of a civilized country (W. Irving).

42. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finest Scotch whisky you ever tasted – put you right in less than no time (j.K.Jerome).

43. She’s the pregnant twenty-two in the tie-dyed vest and leggings (P. McCarthy).

44. ‘That woman,’ he said, ‘could bring down the walls of Jericho just by blowing her nose’ (N.Boyd).

45. He thought of a gun, but weapons were abhorrent to him and so he settled on the next best thing known to a man: a bodyguard with four legs (P.Auster).

46. The dead man in Yossarian’s tent was simply not easy to live with (J.Heller).

47. Mira was hiding in the ladies’ room. She called it that even though someone had scratched out the word “ladies’ ” in the sign on the door, and written “women’s” underneath (m. French).

48. The conversation with Aldous Huxley not infrequently puts one at the receiving end of an unforgettable monologue (l.White Jr.).

49. Suddenly through the smoke peaked caps, gold epaulettes and braided uniforms appeared, distracted from their purpose only briefly by the sight of a naked yokel (P. McCarthy).

50. Still and all, Mr. Bones was a dog. Mr. Bow Wow, Monsieur Woof Woof, Sir Cur (P.Auster).

51. As a sign of respect – though even at that time the custom was passing out of use – Shem and the one beginning with J. entered their father’s chamber backwards, and managed to get him into bed without letting their gaze fall on those organs of generation which mysteriously incite your species to shame (J. Barnes).

52. Sam and Poppy’s appetites were as slight as their bodies and I worried about them. “Mrs. Worry, do you not know that people who eat less are healthier and live longer?” demanded Nathan (E.Buchan).

53. He said noncommittally, “We will have to call in explosive experts as the damage here on preliminary inspection, and in the absence of any gas, seems to have been caused by an explosive device”. Why didn’t he say “bomb”, I thought irritably, “Why shy away from the word”? (D. Francis).

54. I married early and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own (E.A.Poe).

55. Now, you’re asking for human feeling. I don’t think he had much. I’d say just bored. Playing Lord Bountiful to the yokels (J. Fowles).

56. Where was this tiger she was talking about – and how could a tiger be prowling around out here where people lived? Willy had taken him to a zoo once, and he knew all those big striped jungle cats (P.Auster).

57. A man took me upstairs to a small cupboard, kitted out with a dwarf’s bed and sink (P. McCarthy).

58. As children bid the guest good-night,

And then reluctant turn,

My flowers raise their pretty lips,

Then put their nightgowns on (E. Dickinson).

59. The poor staring face on the floor was more than he could bear (J.Buchan).

60. ‘This is so important a matter, Charles,’ he said. ‘I will not wait even to take a death-preventing dose of the liquor.’ (N.Boyd).

61. Mrs. Tukesbury invited them to sit down and offered them the plate of cucumber sandwiches. The vicar returned three cucumber sandwiches later (J.Archer).

62.“- See, with giantesses, what counts is producin’ good big kids, and he’s always been a bit on the runty side fer a giant – on’y sixteen foot –”

“-Oh yes, tiny!” said Hermione(…). Absolutely minuscule” (J.Rowling).

63. He explained that these people had burst into our house one night without a warrant screaming obscenities and Father Neil had bravely blacked the eye of one before the other kneed him in the unmentionables (N.Boyd).

64. “One more word about Harry’s love life and the deal’s off and that’s a promise,” said Hermione irritably. “What deal?” said Rita(…). “You haven’t mentioned a deal yet, Miss Prissy (j.Rowling).

65. Fr Duddleswell was engrossed in a tabloid newspaper which he bought regularly for Mrs Pring. He looked up at me and tutted: ‘Father Neil, newspapers these days. ‘Tis all bosoms and etceteras’ (N.Boyd).

66. She is a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tyre, rim and all (R.Chandler).

67. Movies portrayed the idea that only men, those direct descendants of hunters and Hemingways, inherited a primal capacity for friendship (E.Goodman).

Theme 5. Lexico-semantic stylistic devices. Figures of co-occurrence

I. Simile

II. Oxymoron

III. Antithesis

IV. Climax. Anticlimax

V. Pun. Zeugma

VI. Epithet

Figures of co-occurrence are stylistic devices based on interrelations of two or more units of meaning actually following one another.

I. SIMILE [′simili] is an imaginative comparison that shows likeness of two objects, belonging to two different classes. The objects compared are not completely identical; they resemble each other due to some identical features. The common feature of two objects is either mentioned directly, e.g. He was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in the room full of rocking chairs, or the hearer is supposed to guess what features the two objects have in common, e.g. The cigarette tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief (R.Chandler).

Similes have formal elements in their structure: these are connective words such as: like, as, as if, as though, such as, as … as.

e.g. There, in front of my eyes, was a hand as hairy as a birds nest but birdless of course (N.Boyd).

Such verbs as “to resemble”, “to remind”, “to seem”, etc., bearing the idea of juxtaposition and comparison, may also be formal signals of a simile. Some scholars (V.Kukharenko) call such similes “disguised”, e.g. Huddled in her gray fur against the sofa cushions, Aurora resembled a captive owl.

Simile should not be confused with logical comparison. In logical comparison objects belonging to the same class are likened. In simile objects belonging to the different classes are likened.

Compare: She sings like a professional soloist (logical comparison).

She sings like a bird (simile).

Numerous similes due to their wide currency have become trite and add to the stock of language phraseology, e.g. as cool as a cucumber, as bright as a button, as keen as mustard, etc.

A fresh simile, discovering unexpected and striking similarities, is one of the best image-creating devices, e.g. … man-like sea heaved with long, strong lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep (H. Melville).

A simile can be accompanied by another SD, for instance an irony: …he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food (R.Chandler).

Thus, it is often based on exaggeration of properties described, e.g. I poured some water in the glass and drank it. It tasted like a cholera culture.

Simile is used:

• to characterize the given objects or phenomena, e.g. It was a tight crackling voice, like someone tiptoeing across a lot of eggshells (R.Chandler);

• to create an image, to evoke some ideas;

• to bring out unexpected, striking similarities of different objects.

II. OXYMORON [ֽәksi′mә:rәn] is a Greek term, derived from oxy (sharp) and moros (dull). It is an attributive or an adverbial combination of two contradictory or incongruous words. E.g. And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true (W.Tennyson).

Oxymoron may also be formed by predicative combinations, e.g to cry silently.

One of the two members of oxymoron illuminates the objective inherent feature; the other one offers a purely subjective individual perception of the object, e.g. living death, deafening silence, orderly chaos, etc. Sometimes oxymoron displays no internal contradictions, but rather an opposition of what is real to what is pretended, e.g. careful careless manner.

Expressions like “awfully glad (kind)”, “terribly nice, pretty dirty” were once oxymoronic combinations but they have lost their stylistic effect and become mere intensifiers, emphatic colloquial synonyms of the neutral “very”, e.g. That building is a little bit big and pretty ugly (J.Thurber).

Oxymoron is used:

• to disclose the essence of an object full of seeming or genuine contradictions, e.g. Her hair was carefully messed-up;

• to produce some emotional impact on the reader e.g. O anything of nothing first create!/ O heavy lightness, serious vanity!/ Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!/ feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!(W. Shakespeare);

• to create ambiguity through contradiction, e.g. A flash of cold-edged heat enclosed me (R.Ellison);

• to provide the novelty of expression. They make effective titles and appealing phrases, and some are meant to be humorous, e.g. definite maybe, cheerful pessimist, etc.

III. ANTITHESIS [æn′tІθІsІs] (Greek for setting opposite) is a juxtaposition (putting together) of words, phrases, clauses, or sentences contrasted in meaning, e.g. He is so full of himself that he is quite empty.

The term “antithesis” has a broad range of meanings. According to I.R.Galperin, only stylistic opposition which arises out of the context may be called antithesis. Logical opposition based on antonyms and displaying no additional shade of meaning can not be regarded as “antithesis”. However, some scholars (Y.M.Skrebnev) consider that this term denotes any opposition, really or presumably contrastive, e.g. from top to toe; dead or alive; black or white, etc.

There are two varieties of antithesis:

1. two opposed notions may refer to the same object of thought, e.g. I had walked into that reading-room a happy healthy man, I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

2. two different objects are opposed to each other and are given opposite

characteristics. The device serves to emphasize their incompatibility, e.g. To a General setting before the maps eighty miles away, matters are proceeding as planned <…>, but to the soldiers everything is going wrong. Here antithesis accentuates the difference between the two levels of the battle. The peril and commotion of the battlefield is opposed to the peace and quite of the Headquarters.

Antithesis stands close to oxymoron. The difference between them is structural: oxymoron is a single combination of words, syntactically connected but semantically incongruent, while antithesis is a confrontation of two separate phrases (sentences or even paragraphs) of opposite meaning. Usually antithesis is based on parallel constructions:

e.g. To err is human

To forgive is divine.

Antithesis may be used in every type of emotional speech (poetry, imaginative, prose, colloquial speech):

• to create certain rhythmic effect;

• to compare two objects or to set a contrast between them;

• to connect words, clauses or sentences and to unite their senses;

• to disconnect words, clauses or sentences and to disunite their senses;

• to give a point and vivacity to the utterance.

IV. CLIMAX (GRADATION) [′klaІmæks] denotes such an arrangement of notions expressed by words, word combinations or sentences in which what precedes is less significant than what follows. In other words, the first element is the weakest; the subsequent elements gradually increase in strength, the last being the strongest.

e.g. I am not in recession. I’m doing fine. I’m well-off. I’m almost rich (D.Lodge).

There are 3 indispensable constituents of climax:

• the distributional constituent: close proximity of the component parts arranged in increasing order of importance or significance;

• the syntactical pattern: parallel constructions with possible lexical repetition;

• the connotative constituent: the explanatory context which helps the reader to grasp the gradation.

According to Galperin, there are three types of climax:

1. logical climax is intensification of logical importance of the component parts, e.g. He speculates that these people are the ones he sent off on various missions, and perhaps some of them, or many of them, or all of them did not fare so terribly well (P.Auster);

2. emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning, e.g. She felt nervous, scared, terrified to death.;

c) quantitative climax is an evident increase in the volume, quantity, size, dimension of the corresponding concepts, e.g. When a person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it (R.Dahl).

The stylistic value of this figure of speech is emphatic as the emotional tone of this sentence where each clause surpasses the previous one in intensity of expression is suggestive of great nervous strain.

ANTICLIMAX (BACK GRADATION) [ֽæntІ ′klaІmæks] is the sequence of ideas that abruptly diminish in dignity or importance at the end of a sentence or passage.

e.g. In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning (R. Chandler).

The weakest element added to one or several strong ones receives prominence due to an interruption in the pattern of predictability.

The effect produced is called “defeated expectancy”, e.g. Get a house and a wife and a fire to put her in.

Anticlimax is used:

• to attract the reader’s attention;

• to produce humorous or satirical effect e.g. I cannot take another minute of it! The Army is brutal, dehumanized and full of morons. It’s time something was done. When I get back to the barracks, I’ll write my mother about it;

• to decline from a noble, impressive tone to a less exalted one, e.g. I’ll read you a chapter of the Bible or buy you a drink.

Paradoxes can also be built on anticlimax. Paradox is an assertion seemingly opposed to common sense but that may have some truth in it yet, e.g. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious (O. Wilde)

V. PUN [′pΛ n] is a play on words. It is based a) on the interrelation of two well-known meanings of a word (polysemy) or b) on the interplay of two words or word combinations that sound the same (homonymy).

e.g. Officer: What steps (measures) would you take if an enemy tank were coming towards you?

Soldier: Long ones.

e.g. I had just mentioned that a famous novelist had also taken a house in Trebethan Bay for six months to finish a novel. “Good heavens.” Nat made one of his faces, I had no idea he was such a slow reader.

Contextual conditions resulting in the formation of “pun” may vary:

a) intentional misinterpretation of a word by the same speaker, e.g. Victoria’s father was a group-captain in the RAF and has retired to live in Grasse. “Out to Grasse” Victoria calls it. This is a pun on “out to grass” – the phrase used to describe retired horses who are allowed to graze in the fields in their old age.

b) pretended jocular misunderstanding, e.g. Are you getting fit or having one? (from the television program M*A*S*H*). Hawkeye uses the word “fit” in two different meanings “physically toned” and “neurological crisis”.

c) intentional treating idioms as if they were word combinations (or single words) used in their primary sense:

e.g. Cannibal Cook: Shall I stew both those cooks we captured from the steamer?

Cannibal King: No, one is enough. Too many cooks spoil the broth.

e.g. He was a good sixty, or rather a bad sixty.

d) misinterpretation caused by the phonetic similarity of two words, e.g. he’ll – heel, we’d – weed.

There are different kinds of pun:

a) homographic where the pun exploits multiple meanings of essentially the same word, e.g. “I am not the only one who is late here”, says the ghost. “Late” means both “arriving after expected time” and “dead”.

b) ideophonic, where the words of similar but not identical sound are confused, e.g. meter – meet her, responsibility – response-ability.

c) homophonic, in which the words are pronounced identically but are of distinct and separate origin, e.g. I’ve no idea how worms reproduce but you often find them in pairs (pears).

Puns can be simple (like given above) and compound, e.g. “Three brothers asked their mother to think of a name for their cattle-ranch. She suggested Focus Ranch, explaining that Focus means where the sun’s rays meet” (Sons raise meat).

Pun may be used in every type of emotional speech (poetry, imaginative, prose, colloquial speech). In previous epochs this stylistic device was used for serious rhetorical effect, e.g. in the Bible. “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.” The name “Peter” is derived from “Petros” and means “rock, stone”.

In modern poetry and prose pun is employed with a humorous aim. It is widely used in riddles and jokes, e.g. When did the blind man see? When he picked up his hammer and saw.

e.g. A young lady, weeping softly in her mother’s lap:

– My husband just can’t bear the children.

–He needn’t bear children, my dear. You shouldn’t expect much of you husband.

Some famous abbreviations are also puns, e.g. 2 much – too much, K-9 (police dog) – canine, 4u- for you.

The use of pun in advertisements makes them catchy, easy to remember, e.g. Antiseptic sticks act “on the spot”.

ZEUGMA [′z(j)u:gmә] consists in combining unequal, semantically heterogeneous, or even incompatible words or phrases, e.g. He loved philosophy and good dinner. One part of speech(most often the main verb, but sometimes a noun) governs two or more other parts of a sentence. The basic word of such combination stands in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to a couple of adjacent words.

e.g. Only the rector, white-haired, wiped his long grey moustache with his serviette and jokes (D.H.Lawrence). Петя пил чай с сахаром, Ваня – с удовольствием, а Сева – с женой.

Zeugma may also be based on a free combination of words plus an idiomatic set-phrase, e.g. He lost his hat and his temper.

In the following joke: “-Did you hit a woman with a child? - No, sir. I hit her with a brick” - the first combination functions as an attribute to the word “woman”, the second as an adverbial modifier of manner.

This SD is employed for humorous effect and is particularly favoured in English emotive prose.

VI. EPITHET [′epІθet] is a word or a group of words giving an expressive characterization of the object described. It discloses the emotionally coloured individual attitude of the speaker (writer) towards the person or thing qualified. It is subjective and evaluative, e.g. a sharp, woodpecker gaze.

Epithet must not be confused with a logical attribute. The latter is neither emphatic nor evaluative, e.g. white snow, dark eyes.

Epithets may be classified on the basis of their semantic and structural properties.

Semantically, epithets can be subdivided into:

1. trite, hackneyed epithets which have little stylistic effect, e.g. true love, dead silence, etc.

b) genuine epithets (fresh, unexpected), e.g. elephantine barks, double-bladed

look, etc.

According to I.R.Galperin, epithets can be divided semantically into two groups:

a) associated with the noun (the idea expressed in the epithet is inherent in the

concept), e.g. dreary midnight;

b) unassociated with the noun (adding a feature that is not inherent in it), e.g. voiceless sands, unthinking silence.

According to V.A. Kukharenko’s semantic classification, epithets may be:

a) emotive proper which convey the emotional evaluation of the object, e.g. nasty,

gorgeous, magnificent;

b) figurative, or transferred which are formed of metaphors, metonymies, similes,

e.g. tobacco-stained smile, knifing hangover..

Structurally, epithets may be subdivided into:

a) simple (single), e.g. sleepless pillow, drowsy Death;

b) compound. Compound epithets include:

• phrase epithets, e.g. head-to-toe beauty, Genghis-Khan-at-height-of-evil-voice;

• sentence epithets, e.g. “Ron”, she said in an I-don’t-think-you’re-being-very-sensitive sort of voice.

Another structural type of epithets is called “reversed”, or “inverted”, e.g. the tiny box of a kitchen, a cupboard of a place.

Epithet is used:

• to describe objects expressively;

• to create an image;

• to show the author’s subjective, individual perception of the object.

Exercise

Analyse the following examples of figures of co-occurrence paying special attention to the functions performed:

1. ‘By the way, congratulation on that moon chappie.’

‘What?’ said Richard.

‘You’ve put a man on the Moon’.

‘Good Heavens’, said Richard.

‘No, not quite,’ said sir Colin, ‘but I’m sure that’s what NASA has planned next’(J.Archer).

2. Even on this countryside the dead hand of the war lay like a corpse decomposing (D. H. Lawrence).

3. The tongue of the righteous is choice silver;

The heart of the wicked is worth little (Parables).

4. “That uproarious wretch, that blighted black-eyed potato of a woman”. Fr.Charles Duddleswell, my parish priest was performing on the landing (N.Boyd).

5. So they were like a couple of bombs, timed to explode some day, but ticking on like two ordinary timepieces, in the meanwhile (d.H.Lawrence).

6. The jewels were artfully random, not precision polished, but fretted, gold and silver, as stone or bone might be by the incessant action of the sea (A.S.Byatt).

7. People, all the people she knew, seemed so entirely contained within their cardboard let’s-be-happy world (D. H. Lawrence).

8. Now the school year was over and he was back with the Dursleys for the summer, back to being treated like a dog that had rolled in something smelly (J.Rowling).

9. Lewis, a little scrub of a fellow, worked absorbedly, unheedingly at the horse, with an absorption that was almost ritualistic (D. H. Lawrence).

10. A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother (Parables, 10:11).

11. She sat mute and motionless, looking at the improbable possible plot reared up before her like a snake out of a magic basket, like ticker-tape, or football results out of television teleprinter (A.S.Byatt).

12. All changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born (w. Yeates).

13. The latter was said with one of his ironic, strong-man I-know-better- than-you smiles, which I always enjoyed (E. Buchan).

14. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed (O.Wilde).

15. He smiled to himself. What a wonderful tragedy! (J.Archer).

16. The hills were like the knuckles of a hand, the dales were below, between, the fingers, narrow, steep and dark (D. H. Lawrence).

17. Well, she thought, on the whole, men had buddies, while women had friends. Buddies bonded, but friends loved.(…) Buddies seemed to “do” things together; friends simply “were” together (E.Goodman).

18. …so he left his father’s house. To return for the wedding of his sister and to show his own future wife to them, the washed-out rag of an American girl (M.Puzo).

19. See, there was this wizard who went (…) bad. As bad as you could go. Worse. Worse than worse (J.Rowling).

20. A team of doctors had examined the bodies and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated or (…) harmed at all. In fact… the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health – apart from the fact that they were all dead (J.Rowling).

21. He had heard the bad, he had heard the worse, but it wasn’t until Henry started talking about hiding places that he understood the full horror of what he was getting himself into (P.Auster).

22. ‘Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black- ’

‘-and it’s getting blacker every day, it’s filthy’ (J.Rowling).

23. As Henry continued to describe the various problems the two of them would be up against, Mr. Bones found himself advancing from anxiety to fear to outright terror (P.Auster).

24. Doctor: ‘How’s the patient who swallowed a dollar yesterday?’

Nurse: ‘No change yet’.

25. Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.”(W.Allen).

26. In their consequences, these events have terrified – have tortured – have destroyed me (E. A .Poe).

27. She had white breasts and a large salary (N. Boyd).

28. Perhaps, in such a story, I could tell how he invented some simple little sales trick which made him a millionaire with two yachts, a palace on Riviera, a swimming pool and dyspepsia.

29. In order for them to find each other, they would need luck, immense amounts of luck, luck on the scale of a miracle (P.Auster).

30. He took revenge and his carpet slippers.

31. The Texan turned out to be good-natured, dangerous and likable. In three days no one could stand him (J. Heller).

32. The man across the aisle from me has a menacing aura, and a dog-collar (P.McCarthy).

33. In point of fact, Al had little use for the novelty business, and with fewer and fewer customers showing up to buy his goods, there were certain items that had been languishing on the shelves for ten, twelve, and even twenty years (P.Auster).

34. He was a bad-tempered old soul, who thoroughly disapproved of the household and would have given notice, but that he knew which side his bread was buttered: and there was butter, unstinted on his bread, in Mrs. Witt’s kitchen (D.H.Lawrence).

35. For the time, he was good, very good, dangerously good (D.H. Lawrence).

36. The barman-shopkeeper was in his sixties, and a cardigan (P. McCarthy).

37. “Rusty, I’ve always wanted you to meet Ed Shrimpton (…). We must play again for old times’ sake, Ed,” the fat man continued. “It would be fun to see if you could beat me now. Mind you, I’m a bit rusty nowadays, Rusty” (J.Archer).

38. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel – Harry said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig (J. Rowling).

39. She leered at me once more, then her eyes closed and she began to snore (…). Suddenly I had enough of the scene, too much of it, far too much of it (R.Chandler).

40. A small jowly dog, coughing and wheezing like a Romanian asbestos miner who’s taken early retirement, peeps out from beneath that woman’s armpit (P.McCarthy).

41. ‘Yer great puddin’ of a son don’ need fattenin’ any more, Dursley, don’ worry’ (J.Rowling).

42. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do (O.Wilde).

43. A Clean Cauldron Keeps Potions from Becoming Poisons and Antidotes are Anti-Don’ts unless approved by a qualified Healer (J.Rowling).

44. Dumbledore was striding serenely across the room wearing long midnight blue robe and a perfectly calm expression (J.Rowling).

45. ‘Could I borrow Wood for a moment?’

Wood? Thought Harry, bewildered; was Wood a cane she was going to use on him? (J.Rowling).

46. Sonia was too much part of me, and even after the divorce, she was still there, still talking to me in my head – the ever-present absent one, as I sometimes call her now (P.Auster).

47. My mother has always said: “The daughters come back to you eventually. When the sons go, they’re gone” (R.Phyllis).

48. Three hard chairs and a swivel chair, flat desk with a glass top, five green filing-cases, three of them full of nothing, a calendar and a framed license bond on the wall, a phone, a hat-rack <…> and two open windows with net curtains that puckered in and out like the lips of a toothless old man sleeping (R.Chandler).

49. The good neighbors took cakes to the Randall farm, and they tiptoed into the sickroom, where the little skinny bird of a woman lay in a tremendous bed (J.Steinbeck).

50. The rest of all the acts, and all his might, and the cities which he built, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? Nevertheless in the time of his old age he was diseased in his feet (Bible).

51. A pale grey bald patch loomed high up in the middle of his head, like a rock above the timberline. Fuzz grew out of his ears, far enough to catch a moth (R. Chandler).

52. Ron looked exactly like Harry felt. His mouth was stretched wide in a kind of silent scream and his eyes were popping (J.Rowling).

53. He broke the record and a leg.

Theme 6. Syntactical expressive means

I. Classification of Syntactical Expressive Means

II. 1. Ellipsis. 2. Aposiopesis. 3. Asyndeton

III. 1. Repetition. 2. Enumeration. 3. Tautology.

4. Empathetic constructions. 5. Polysyndeton. 6. Parenthesis

IV. 1. Inversion. 2. Detachment

I. Stylistically neutral unmarked sentence pattern is Sub.– Pred.– Odir. – Oind.–Adv. It bears no additional information. The order of words is normal. The communicative purpose of the sentence is expected to be consistent with its structure: thus a declarative sentence must express a statement, and not a question or a request. Any kind of deviation from the said requirements is stylistically relevant.

Expressive means of the syntactical level are sentence patterns, bearing additional logical and expressive information that contributes to pragmatic efficiency of the utterance.

According to possible varieties of deviations, Y.M.Skrebnev classifies syntactical expressive means into three groups:

1) E.M. based on the absence of elements which are obligatory in a neutral construction: a) ellipsis, b) aposiopesis, c) asyndeton;

2) E.M. based on redundancy of syntactical elements: a) repetition, b) enumeration, c) asyndeton, d) emphatic constructions, e) polysyndeton, f) parenthesis;

3) E.M. based on change of fixed word order: a) inversion, b) detachment.

II.1. ELLIPSIS [І′lІpsІs] is the omission of one or both principal parts of the sentence. The missing parts are either present in the context, or they are implied by the situation. The subject is omitted mostly when it is the pronoun of the first person (I), as for the verbs, “to be’ is habitually dropped:

e.g. -Was she there?

-Don’t know.

The missing parts are supplied by the context.

As elliptical sentences are characteristic of colloquial speech, where they are used for economy of language means and articulating efforts, the absence of subjects and predicates doesn’t make such sentences stylistically relevant. Ellipsis becomes an expressive means in literature as a means of imitating the direct speech of characters.

e.g. - Are you married?

-Yeah.

- Kids?

- Two.

- Terrific! (N.Boyd).

Ellipsis shows that the speaker spares his time, reduces redundancy of speech. It may also reveal such emotions as excitement, impatience, sharpness, delight, etc.

In works of fiction, elliptical sentences are also used to impart brevity, a quick tempo, sometimes emotional tension to the author’s narrative, e.g. Students were ever so quiet then. You wouldn’t believe. Ever so thin and grey-looking. Well, it was all the poor food we/d had, wasn’t it? Even bread on coupons (J.Gardam).

Ellipsis is often employed as a means of dynamic description, e.g. The spout was black, I believe, and on the label there was a picture of some grinning idiot boy. A wholesome, idealized numskull with perfectly groomed hair. No cowlicks for that lunkhead, no wobbles in the part for that pretty fellow (P.Auster).

Elliptical sentences are very frequent in papers or handbooks on technology or natural sciences. They are employed for the sake of brevity and emphasis.

Elliptical constructions (including special ready-made formulas) are resorted to in telegraphic messages and reference books.

II. 2. APOSIOPESIS [ֽæpousaiou′pisІs] is intentional break in the narrative. The speaker (writer) either begins a new utterance or stops altogether.

e.g. If we should fail-

Oh, go to_!

In works of fiction, Aposiopesis is used for some stylistic effect:

• the emotional or the psychological state of the speaker depriving him of the ability to express himself in terms of language:

e.g. Now I hear it – yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long – long– long – many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it – yet I dared not – oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! – I dared not – I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! (E.A. Poe).

• unwillingness to proceed;

• speaker’s uncertainty as to what should be said (to threaten, to beg);

• hint, warning, promise etc. The author breaks his narration and invites the reader to give to his own imagination.

e.g. “I would smuggle the spice jar with acid in my trouser pocket. I would wait, pick my moment. As Ralph gobbled down the eggs and fried bread…”

Aposiopesis should not be confused with unintentional break in the narrative, when the character’s speech is interrupted by the interlocutor. Such instances are of no stylistic significance.

II. 3. ASYNDETON [æ′sІndІtən] is deliberate omission of conjunctions: e.g. I loved the noise, the smell, the movement, the quick angers, the gesticulations, the extravagance of ground-level French racing (D.Francis).

Absence of conjunctions in this description shows that the enumeration is not exhaustive. (If “and” is used before the final member of this enumeration, the description seems complete). According to N.A. Sitnova, in colloquial speech the most frequent are conditional and temporal asyndetic adverbial clauses:

e.g. “You want anything, you pay for it” (J.Osborne).

“You get older, you want to feel that you accomplished something” (A.Miller).

Absence of connecting elements:

• imparts dynamic force to the text,

• has the effect of speeding up rhythm of a passage;

• makes a single idea more memorable.

III.1. REPETITION is recurrence of the same element (a word, a phrase or a sentence, e.g. And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never! (W. Shakespeare).

According to the place which the repeated unit occupies in a sentence, repetition is classified into several types:

Ordinary repetition is the reiteration of the same unit in any unfixed place, e.g. “No-! No-! Let her go! Let her go, you fool, you fool -!”cried Ursula at the top of her voice, completely outside herself (D.H.Lawrence).

Framing is the repetition of the same unit both at the beginning and at the end of the utterance, e.g. “I’m serious, y’know” he declared now, with the same dreary solemnity. “I’m not joking. You get me that job out there as soon as you can. I’m serious” (J. Priestley).

Anadiplosis, or catch repetition is the reiteration of the final of the final unit of one utterance at the beginning of the next utterance, e.g. It will be quite possible soon to stop death, to stop death in most cases.

Chain repetition is a combination of two or more catch repetitions, e.g. She looked beyond the frightened pensioners, the girls who looked like women, the women who looked like men, the men who looked like psychos (T. Parsons).

Repetition is widely employed:

• to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

• for clearness, vigour, and a certain rhythmic effect;

• to intensify the idea expressed;

• to provide a transition between paragraphs.

III. 2. ENUMERATION is a list of words, phrases or clauses, usually denoting separate actions, properties, components, etc. of some described notion. E.g., a spider’s breakfast: “Flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies tasty cockroaches, gnats, midgets, daddy-long-legs, centipedes, mosquitoes, crickets – anything that is careless enough to get caught in my web” (E.B.White). This enumeration is homogeneous: each notion is closely associated semantically with the following and preceding ones; the listed words are syntactically in the same position (the same part of speech). Apart from the word tasty, there is nothing peculiar about the chain of the mentioned insects. Such enumerations are of little stylistic effect, as it can hardly take great effort for the reader to decipher the author’s message.

Another variety of enumeration that assumes a stylistic function and may therefore be regarded as a stylistic device is called “heterogeneous” enumeration.

e.g. It would have to be a very long book. Proust came to mind…everything he knew, feathers on hats, Zeppelins, musical forms, paintings, vice, reading, snobbery, sudden death, slow death, food, Love, indifference, the telephone, the table-napkin, the paving-stone, a Life-time (A.S. Byatt).

It is not so easy to perceive the idea, suggested by the author – particular notions are presented as part of the famous writer’s personal experience. Though the enumerated words may seem remote, they obtain some kind of semantic homogeneity. The author does not arrange the elements of this enumeration according to logical semantic centers, displaying the variety of miscellaneous interests and literary conceptions of Proust.

Enumeration may be used:

• for the purpose of disorderly and therefore striking description;

• to raise the expressiveness of speech, making it dynamic and informative;

• to arrest the readers’ attention, making them decipher the message;

• to give the insight into the mind of the observer who pays attention to the variety of heterogeneous objects.

III. 3. SYNTACTICAL TAUTOLOGY is the peculiar use of more syntactical elements in a sentence than are necessary in a neutral syntactical structure. According to Y.M. Skrebnev, syntactical tautology can be of two different kinds:

a) the redundant use of both the noun subject and the corresponding personal pronoun, e.g. Mr. Brown, he lives at yon side, he bought the land right up to the back of us (C. Marchant).

The noun subject separated from the rest of the sentence by the unstressed pronominal subject comes to be detached from the sentence and thus made more prominent.

The use of the redundant pronominal subject is a typical feature of colloquial speech and the speech of uneducated people, e.g. “That Willie Sawyer he don’t know how to have any fun at all” (E. Hemingway).

This kind of syntactic tautology is often met with in nursery rhymes and in folk ballads:

e.g. Jack Sprat’s pig,

He was not very little,

He was not very big.

b) the repetition of the general scheme of a sentence, by means of the pronominal subject and an auxiliary or modal verb, representing the predicate of the main sentence, e.g. She knows a lot about religion, Sally does (D.Lodge). This type of syntactic tautology is met in the speech of uncultivated people, or it may be a sign of emotional colloquial speech.

III.4. Emphatic constructions

a) Emphatic construction it is (was) he who. As the term implies, it is a peculiar compositional pattern of a sentence which brings the most important element in the foreground. This element becomes the predicative of the principal clause, which begins with the pronoun “it” and is followed by “is” or “was”. E.g. It was early spring when I moved in (P.Auster). Compare to the neutral – I moved in early spring. Such constructions are common enough; they are used to attract the reader’s attention to the key word of the utterance, e.g. It was only then that I realized it was she I had seen on the lawn that day at Professor Something’s party (J. Banville).

b) Emphatic construction with the verb “do”, when set against synonymous neutral one, will reveal emphasis.

e.g. We do worry about her really.

To make the sentence empathetic, the verb “to go” may also be used.

e.g. Why do you go and say such things. (Why do you say such things).

III. 5. POLYSYNDETON [ֽpəlІ′sІndІtən] is deliberate repetition of connections before each component part when it is generally not expected. Conjunctions may connect separate words, parts of a sentence (phrases), clauses, simple and complex sentences and even more prolonged segments of text.

Polysyndeton serves:

• to introduce strong dynamic effect, e.g. We lived and laughed and loved and left (J. Joyce);

• to strengthen the idea of equal logical (emotive) importance of connected component parts, e.g. ‘Oh, everybody in the barn cellar. Wilbur and the sheep and the lambs and the goose and the gander and the goslings and Charlotte and me” (E.B. White);

• to emphasize the simultaneity of actions, or close connection of properties enumerated, e.g. They (men and women) come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish;

• to add an air of solemnity to a passage. The elevated tonality of polysyndeton may be explained by associations with the style of the Bible, in which nearly every sentence or at least almost every paragraph begins with “and”, e.g. “And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake” (Rev., 8:5).

e.g. “Noah and his wife had dark hair and brown eyes; so did Ham and his wife; so, for that matter, did Shem and Varadi, and the one beginning with J, and all children of Shem and Varadi and the one beginning with J. (J.Barnes).

III. 6. PARENTHESIS [pə′renθІsІs] is a qualifying explanatory word, phrase or clause which interrupts the normal syntactic flow of the sentence. Parentheses may be divided into 2 classes: a) those expressing modality of what is said, i.e. certainty (I am sure, I know) or different degrees of probability (I suppose, I guess); b) those implying additional information, mostly evaluating what is said.

Words, phrases and sentences of modal meaning are of little or no stylistic value. Parenthetic segments bearing additional information are expressive means which perform a number of stylistic functions. They are used:

• to create the second plane, or background, to the narrative, to reproduce two parallel lines of thought, e.g. Noah had it put about that the raven, instead of returning as soon as possible with evidence of dry land, had been malingering, and had been spotted (by whose eye? not even upwardly mobile dove would have demeaned herself with such a slander) gourmandizing on carrion (J.Barnes).

• to make the inserted verbal unit more conspicuous, more emphatic (than it would be if it had the form of a subordinate clause).

e.g. The main entrance (he had never ventured to look beyond that) was a splendiferous combination of a glass and iron awning, coupled with a marble corridor lined with palms.( Cf. beyond which he had never ventured to look) (T.Dreiser).

• to strengthen the emotional force by making part of the utterance exclamatory or interrogative, e.g. He – what point is there in not telling you the truth? – was bad-tempered, smelly, unreliable, envious and cowardly (J.Barnes);

• to break the monotony of the narrative by giving some unexpected remarks.

IV.1. INVERSION [Іn′və:∫ən] is a specific kind of deviation from usual order of words. It consists in placing a part of the sentence into an unusual initial position for the purpose of emphasis, e.g. My account you can trust (J.Barnes).

The unusual first place may be occupied:

a) by a predicative, e.g. So absorbed was I in this illusion that I accepted the sound as part of it (B. Mac Laverty);

b) by a simple verbal predicate, e.g. Came frightful days of snow and rain.

c) by an adverbial modifier, e.g. With water from a Victorian brass tap Mrs. Smith mopped her face (A.S.Byatt).

d) by the direct object, e.g. This beautiful scene I always enjoy.

Secondary inversion (inversion of inversion) is rearranging the question in direct word order, e.g. “You like?” he says in English (W.Boyd).

IV. 2. DETACHMENT [dІ′tæt∫mənt] is a syntactic expressive means in which a secondary part of the sentence is torn away from the word it refers to and gains some sort of independence and greater degree of significance. In oral speech it can be achieved by means of intonation. In writing and print, detached parts are separated from the rest of the sentence by punctuation marks (mostly by commas or dashes), e.g. She heard Conrad’s voice, plaintive and wild (A.S.Byatt).

Sometimes the detached word is placed not in immediate proximity to its referent, e.g. He’d suggest sitting down and then he’d begin to fumble at her, and his chin would be sticking into her face, cold and unpleasant (W. Trevor).

The general stylistic effect of detachment is strengthening, emphasizing the word (or phrase) in question. Besides, detachment imparts additional syntactical meanings to the word or phrase.

Exercise Analyse the following cases of syntactical stylistic expressive means:

1. A REAL WITCH spends all her time plotting to get rid of the children in her particular territory <…>. Even if she is working as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman or driving round in a fancy car (and she could be doing any of these things), her mind will always be plotting and scheming and churning and burning and whizzing and fizzing with murderous bloodthirsty thoughts (R.Dahl).

2. Tall, dark, with a clear olive skin, brilliant black eyes, gleaming white teeth. Sideburns. A narrow black moustache. Sideburns too long, much too long (R.Chandler).

3. Three-D pictures aren’t conventional photographs, and you need the viewer to translate them into coherent images. No viewer, no image. No image, no more time travel into past. No more time travel, no more joy (P.Auster).

4. She had lived through and noticed a certain amount of history. A war, a welfare, state, the rise (and fall) of the meritocracy, European unity, little England, equality of opportunity, comprehensive schooling, women’s liberation, the death of the individual, the poverty of Liberalism (A.S. Byatt).

5. But the doctor said to watch at night and they went home and ate their supper, and Assunta fell asleep, but her husband stayed awake, and then at midnight he saw a great viper come into the bed and suck the milk from the breasts of the woman. And then the farmer gave the alarm, and all the farmers from around came and they found against the wall a nest of eight great serpents (J. Cheever).

6. Turned out he was German (P. McCarthy).

7. For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin Captain’s biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thing, not the captain) and soda water (J.K.Jerome).

8. But she never did explain. All her life since then, I think, she has been trying to explain, or to avoid explaining. She only said: “Grandpa was old and ill, he wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway”. And there was the official verdict: suicide by swallowing prussic acid. But all the other things that should have been explained – or confessed – she never did explain (Gr. Swift).

9. I sat on the side of the bed, arms dangling between my knees, and was suddenly exhausted. My head fizzed, my eyes burned, but yet I could not make myself lie down to sleep. I might have been a child come home after a day of wild excursions. I had traveled far. Slowly, with underwater movements, I untied my shoelaces. One shoe dropped, and then – (J. Banville).

10. There was a lot more about the temple and the crowds and the clothes they were wearing, and the gifts of coconut and flour and rice they had brought, and the afternoon light on the old stones of the courtyard (V. S. Naipaul).

11. Leggings. Bloody hell. Imagined by fatties everywhere to create a slimming effect, they make the average body look like a sackful of hammers (P. McCarthy).

12. To be alive meant to breathe; to breathe meant the open air and the open air meant any place that was not Baltimore, Maryland (P. Auster).

13. Catherine lies silent behind her dark glasses, like a lizard; sun-ridden, storing, self-absorbed (J. Fowles).

14. “That St. Mawr, he’s a bad horse,” said Phoenix (d.H. Lawrence).

15. Out she swept like the bad fairy at the christening (d. Riddle).

16. She turned away, picking up the scattered jigsaw, disappointed (D.Moggach).

17. I should have given it a try, refused to take no for an answer. Only out of stubbornness are great things born (p.Auster).

18. To attract a female, a fiddler crab has to stand on tiptoe and brandish his claw in the air. If any female in the neighborhood is interested – and you’d be surprised how many are not – she comes over and engages him in light badinage, for which he is not in the mood (J. Thurber).

19. They should let in people to view me, the girl-eater, svelte and dangerous, padding to and fro in my cage, my terrible green glance flickering past the bars, give them something to dream about (J. Banville).

20. Me he treated with watchful affability, addressing me as friend, and even – do I imagine it? - as pardner (J.Banville).

21. My instincts, the instincts of our tribe, those coiled springs, tempered in the dark forests of the north, went slack down there, they did (J.Banville).

22. His quiet, reluctant movements, as if he never really wanted to do anything; his long flat-stepping stride; the permanent challenge in his high cheek-bones, the Indian glint in his eyes, and his peculiar stare, watchful and yet unseeing, made him unpopular with the women servants (D.H.Lawrence).

23. It might have been they who were married to one another, their duel and their duet were so relentless (D.H. Lawrence).

24. It haunted her, the horse (D. H. Lawrence).

25. Of the various kinds of darkness I shall not speak (J. Banville).

26. He had a curious quiet power over the horses, unemotional, unsympathetic, but silently potent (D. H. Lawrence).

27. But it’s not I who am involved. It’s two very delightful children (A. Christie).

28. When the Ark landed on the mountaintop (it was more complicated than that, of course, but we’ll let details pass), Noah sent out a raven and a dove to see if the waters had retreated from the face of the earth (J. Barnes).

29. I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods (A.Sexton);

30. And it was in that moment that she made her decision – the decision that was to lead to such very momentous events (A. Christie).

31. Then he screwed his face up and his chin wobbled and his chest began to bounce in and out and a sound came out of him like a convalescent rooster learning to crow again after a long illness. (R.Chandler).

32. ‘You know,’ he said, in an important voice, ‘I’ve thought all along that that pig of ours was an extra good one. He’s a solid pig. That pig is as solid as they come. You notice how solid he is around the shoulders, Lurvy?’ (E.B.White).

33. At four would come supper. Skim milk, provender left-over sandwich from Lurvy’s lunchbox, prune skins, a morsel of this, a bit of that, fried potatoes, marmalade drippings, a little more of this, a little more of that, a piece of baked apple, a scrap of upside-down cake (E.B.White).

Theme 7. Syntactical stylistic devices

I. Parallelism

II. Chiasmus

III. Anaphora. Epiphora

IV. Rhetorical question

I. PARALLELISM [′pærəlelІzəm] consists in similarity of syntactical structures of two or more successive sentences, e.g. The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons (R.W. Emerson). Parallel constructions are often accompanied by the repetition of one or several members of each sentence but this repetition is not obligatory, e.g. From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away (R.Chandler).

Parallelism may be complete and partial. Complete parallelism consists in the repetition of identical structures, e.g. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Partial parallelism is the repetition of some parts of syntactical structures, e.g. We weep when she finds no rest for the sole of her foot. We rejoice when she returns to the Ark with an olive leaf (J.Barnes).

Parallelism is widely used:

• to show that the ideas in the parts or sentences are equal in importance;

• to add balance and rhythm to the utterance;

• helps to make recurring parts more conspicuous than their surroundings;

• to emphasize the diversity or contrast of ideas (in combination with antithesis), e.g. Imagination was given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humour to console him for what he is.

II. CHIASMUS [kaІ′æzməs] is a variety of parallelism in which the order of words in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. It is named after the Greek letter “chi” (x), indicating “criss-cross” arrangement of words. Though pure syntactic chiasmus does not depend on any kind of lexical repetition, it is usually accompanied by a repetition of the same words, e.g. The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order (A.N.Whitehead). Chiasmus can also involve the reversal of complete phrases (not only single words), e.g. Some have an idea that the reason we in this country discard things so readily is because we have so much. The facts are exactly opposite – the reason we have so much is simply because we discard things so readily (A.P.Sloan).

Sometimes active and passive constructions display the reversal of word-order, e.g. …high-rank soldiers who never fire a gun and never have gun fired at them. The subject of the first sentence becomes the object of the second one.

Chiasmus produces striking effect if it is accompanied by play on words, e.g. A handsome man kisses misses, an ugly man misses kisses.

This stylistic device serves:

• to bring in some additional meaning;

• to emphasize certain parts of an utterance;

• to break the monotony of parallel constructions;

• to contribute to the rhythmical quality of the utterance;

• to make phrases catchy (in advertisements).

III. ANAPHORA [ə′næfərə] consists in identity of one or several initial elements in some successive sentences or clauses, e.g. One moment you wish to be wild, one moment you wish to be tame (J. Barnes). In this example anaphoric repetition is accompanied by complete parallelism. This, however, is by no means obligatory with anaphora, e.g. It was understandable when you looked at him that parents and staff didn’t guess. It was understandable that his activities were protected by senior girls (W.Trevor).

The main stylistic functions of anaphora are:

• it emphasizes the repeated unit;

• fixes the recurring segment in the reader’s memory, e.g. Best for baby. Best for you (Johnson & Johnson shampoo);

• produces a certain rhythmic effect in the utterance;

• creates the background for the non-repeated unit, which through its novelty becomes conspicuous;

• provides a transition between paragraphs.

EPIPHORA [І′pІfərə] is the repetition of the same unit at the end of two or more successive clauses or sentences, e.g. Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town (R.Chandler).

Like anaphora, this stylistic device can be built on parallel constructions of different kind, e.g. World is evil

Life is evil

All is evil (L. Ferlnghetti).

Besides, epiphora is often used in combination with anaphora in adjacent utterances; this stylistic phenomenon is termed “symploca”, e.g. What do men know? What do flies know? What for that matter do dogs know? (P.Auster).

Epiphora enhances rhythmic regularity of speech, attracts the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance, contributes to the logical coherence of a text.

IV. RHETORICAL QUESTION implies asking questions not to gain information but to assert more emphatically the obvious answer to what is asked. No answer, in fact, is expected by the speaker who never doubts which kind of answer can be expected. Though this stylistic device has a form of a question, in essence, it is an affirmative or negative statement. E.g. Did you do anything to lessen my load? means You did nothing; Does anybody not know? implies Everyone knows that.

Rhetorical question is mainly employed in belles-lettres and publicistic styles, particularly, in oratory. Asking the question the answer to which is perfectly clear, the speaker leads or forces his hearers into agreeing with his point of view. Besides, rhetorical questions intensify the expressiveness of the utterance, enhance its emotional charge.

Exercise

Identify the type of stylistic devices and expressive means in the following sentences:

1. He couldn’t stand Mrs. Witt, and Mrs. Witt couldn’t stand him (D.H.Lawrence).

2. The sun’s shining and the gorse’s blooming as I head back towards Cork airport (P. McCarthy).

3. “I’m not afraid to die,” I said. “I’m not afraid to live. I’m not afraid to fail. I’m not afraid to succeed. I’m not afraid to fall in love. I’m not afraid to be alone. I’m just afraid I might have to stop talking about myself for five minutes” (K.Friedman).

4. She had lived now through birth, puberty, illness, sex, love, marriage, other births, other kinds of love, family and kinship and local manifestations of these universals, Drs. Spock, Bowlby, Winnicot, Flower Power, gentrification, the transformation of the adjective gay into a politicized noun (A.S.Byatt).

5. I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me (W.Churchill).

6. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands (W.Shakespeare).

7. And Grandfather wasn’t the same person in his shed as he was in the house – sour and cantankerous (Gr. Swift).

8. If word got out, just think of what would happen. Dogs as smart as men? A blasphemous assertion (P. Auster).

9. ‘You know where I’d really like to be this evening?’

‘Where?’

‘In a forest looking for beech nuts and truffles and delectable roots, pushing leaves aside with my wonderful strong nose, searching and sniffing along the ground, smelling, smelling, smelling…

‘You smell just the way you are,’ remarked a lamb who had just walked in. ‘I can smell you from here. You’re the smelliest creature in the place.”

10. ‘Man named Montgomery. Somebody broke his neck.’

‘May the Lawd receive his soul, brother.’ Down went the voice again. ‘Cop?’ (R.Chandler).

11. So some time in February – the worst of all months in England, when the desire to hibernate or flee is almost uncontrollable, and feeling malice towards Australians and their weather well up – the thought to get away struck me (P.McCarthy).

12. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good (S. Johnson).

13. We will take up the burden. We will comfort him. We will close his eyes. We will bury him and weep at his funeral and afterwards we will watch over his wife and daughters (M.Puzo).

14. ‘Specially grown for flavour’, claim the supermarket’s Dutch tomatoes. Well, what other reason is there for growing tomatoes? Speed? Comfort? An ability to glow in the dark? (P.McCarthy).

15. For food in a world where many walk in hunger,

For friends in a world where many walk alone,

For faith in a world where many walk in fear

We praise your name, oh Lord (Grace).

16. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering and I envied the people for having something to do (J.Buchan).

17. He complained of sleeplessness and my colleague allowed him a certain amount of sleeping tablets. Whilst pretending to take them, he had accumulated a sufficient amount and (A.Christie).

18. Oh, if only, he kept telling himself, if only he could do something tremendous like saving her life or rescuing her from a gang of armed thugs, if only he could perform some great feat that would make him a hero in her eyes. If only… (R.Dahl).

19. It’s a nightmare of a year, the fifth (J.Rowling).

20. Think of what happens when you say it. See what you say when you think it (P.Auster).

21. His career had gone to hell, his voice had gone to hell, his family life had gone to hell (M. Puzo).

22. Never let a fool kiss you – or a kiss fool you.

23. Merit meant nothing. Talent meant nothing. Work meant nothing. The Mafia Godfather gave you your profession as a gift (M.Puzo).

24. ‘Doesn’t anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came across such a set in my life – upon my word I didn’t. Six of you! – and you can’t find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the –

Then he’d get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out:

‘Oh, you can give it up! I’ve found it myself now’ (J.K.Jerome).

25. ‘I suppose you know what happens to you when you get the shrinks?’ he said.

‘Your head SHRINKS into your neck…

‘And your neck SHRINKS into your body…

‘And your body SHRINKS into your legs…

‘And your legs SHRINK into your feet. And in the end there’s nothing left except a pair of shoes and a bundle of old clothes’ (R.Dahl).

26. “Now listen to me, all of you,” he said. “Those diamonds were worth millions! Millions and millions! and you have saved them!” The Monkey nodded. The Giraffe smiled. The Pelican blushed.

27. He stopped after a while. His face came smooth again and his eyes opened, black, sharp and shrewd (R.Chandler).

28. The wall looked solid, felt solid, was solid (D. Francis).

29. Fine thanks he got for his valour. Noah had him casseroled on Embarkation Sunday (J. Barnes).

30. The trouble with Mrs. Silver was that she gave all her love to somebody else, and that somebody else was a small tortoise called Alfie (R.Dahl).

Theme 8. Functional styles

I. Belles-Lettres style.

II. Publicistic style.

III. Newspaper style.

IV. Scientific style.

V. Official style.

I. BELLES-LETTRES STYLE falls into several variants, or substyles, each having its distinctive features. These are:

a) language style of poetry;

b) language style of emotive prose;

c) language style of drama.

The main function of the belles-lettres style, distinguishing it from other styles is called “aesthetical-cognitive”, i.e. to impress the reader aesthetically, to call forth a feeling of pleasure, caused not only by the use of the selected language means and their peculiar arrangement but also by the fact that the reader is led to form his own conclusions as to the general meaning of what someone says. Besides, the belles-letters style has informative and persuasive functions also found in other functional styles.

According to I.R.Galperin, the belles-lettres style has the following linguistic features:

• genuine, not trite, imagery achieved by purely linguistic devices;

• the use of words in contextual and very often in more than one dictionary meaning or at least influenced by the lexical environment;

• a vocabulary reflecting the author’s personal evaluation of things or phenomena;

• a peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax;

• the use of colloquial language.

Most scholars (I.V.Arnold) associate belles-letters style with prose works, regarding poetry as a special poetic style. Viewed diachronically this opinion does not seem controversial, for poems of previous centuries, indeed, support particular idea adhered to a very specific vocabulary and its ordering. But the poetry of the 20th-21st century does not show much difference from prosaic vocabulary, its subjects are no more limited to several specific “poetic” fields but widely cover practically all spheres of existence of contemporary man. So it is hardly relevant to speak of a separate poetic style meaning contemporary literature.

II. PUBLICISTIC STYLE can be subdivided into the following substyles:

a) language style of oratory;

b) language style of essays;

c) language style of feature articles in newspapers and journals.

The main function of PS is to influence the reader and to shape his views in accordance with the argumentation of the author.

Texts of publicistic style are characterized by:

• a wide range of the questions discussed;

• brevity of expression;

• an address to the large audience;

• logical reasoning, strong subjectivity, reflecting the author’s bias, emotional appeal to the reader or listener, evaluation of the subject discussed.

As publicistic style is aimed at logical and emotive argumentation, it stands close to the scientific style and that of emotive prose and has a number of common features with them.

Like scientific prose, it is characterized by:

• logical cohesion, clarity and precision;

• careful paragraphing;

• use of cliché.

Like emotive prose, its characteristic features are:

• the use of words in their figurative contextual meaning; e.g. freedom fighters, posthumous smear campaign;

• imagery, stylistic devices (mainly trite).

III. NEWSPAPER STYLE has the following substyles:

a) language style of brief news items and communiqués;

b) language style of newspaper headings;

c) language style of notices and advertisements.

The main aim of newspaper style is to inform and instruct the reader. The function of information is predominant in brief news items, articles purely informative in character, press reports, advertisements and announcements.

Leaders and editorials both give subjective appraisal of facts and bear information, characterized by a combination of two styles – Newspaper and Publicistic.

• The peculiar features of newspaper style are objectivity, impartiality in rendering facts or events. The materials tend to be intelligible to the vast majority of potential readers, so they are explicit and precise. News writing strives to be engaging and succinct. It rarely depends on colorless generalizations or abstract ideas. Among the larger and more respected newspapers, fairness and balance is a major factor for the presentation of information. Most information is published anonymously.

• Graphically, the newspaper style is notable for the change of type, specific headlines. These means are aimed at attracting the reader’s attention.

• The vocabulary consists mainly of neutral and common literary words. There are many political social and economic terms, e.g. gross output, commodity exchange, nuclear nonproliferation treaty, etc. It also contains large proportion of dates and personal names, names of countries, territories, institutions, individuals. Besides, the newspaper style is characterized by the abundant use of clichés, non-special terminology, abbreviations, neologisms, euphemisms, idioms. News writers often avoid using the same word more than once in a paragraph; they have preference for short words and try not to rely on jargon.

• Syntax is simple, subject-verb-object construction is widely used to make prose succinct;

• The structure of a news text is often associated with “inverted pyramid”. It means that a journalist places the essential and most interesting information at the top. Supporting elements then follow in order of diminishing importance.

IV. SCIENTIFIC PROSE STYLE falls into the following substyles, all having a number of common features:

a) language style of humanitarian sciences;

b) language style of “exact” sciences;

c) language style of popular scientific prose.

Scientific Prose Style is employed in professional communication. Its main function is to convey logical intellectual information. This style serves as an instrument for promoting scientific ideas and exchanging scientific information among people. That’s why it is known for its precision, clarity, logical cohesion. This function is characteristic of all the genres of scientific prose. They are monographs, journal articles, theses, patents, annotations, scientific advertisements, lectures, declarations, etc. Some of them are aimed at expressing and formulating scientific theoretical thesis (monograph, thesis, article), some of the genres have scientific-informative character (report papers, annotations, etc.). Each genre has its own variants. Thus, a journal article can be an experimental one, or raising a problem or polemic.

For all that, there is a set of qualitative characteristics which allow singling out this style.

• The most conspicuous feature of the vocabulary is the use of terms specific to each given branch of science, e.g. mother broad, dyslexia, palatal, etc. The necessity to penetrate deeper into the essence of things and phenomena gives rise to new concepts which require new words to name them. That’s why scientific prose is so prolific in coining new words. This style is also characterized by the abundant use of bookish words, e.g. heterogeneous, comprise, approximate, phenomenon, etc. Bookish words are usually polysyllabic, borrowed words, sometimes, they are not assimilated. The repeated use of clichés, such as “proceeding from”, “as it was said above”, “in connection with” is no less noticeable feature in scientific prose.

• The impersonality is another typical feature of this style. The passive voice is widely used to show that the discovery, experiment or result is more important than the person involved. Another morphological means expressing impersonality is the use of the personal pronoun “we” in the meaning of “I”. It is so-called “plural of modesty”.

• The present tense or will + verb are normally used to state a natural law or usual result, e.g. Ice will form from water at 0’C.

• In mathematics the imperative form and the present tense are often employed, e.g. To change a common fraction to a decimal, divide the numerator by the denominator.

• The most conspicuous peculiarity of this style is the logical sequence of utterances with clear indication of their interrelations and interdependence.

• In scientific prose complex sentences with subordinate clause are widely used. Brief simple sentences often point out the most important thoughts.

• Another observable feature is the use of references and quotations.

The language of scientific prose is unemotive but emotiveness is not entirely excluded. A very specific element of emotiveness is felt, e.g. very far from conservative; it is by no means trivial.

V. THE STYLE of OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS can be divided into:

a) language style of diplomatic documents;

b) language style of business documents;

c) language style of legal documents;

d) language style of military documents.

The functions of the style of official documents vary and depend on the pragmatic strategy, for example, business letters are very important for normal commercial activity; the aim of communication in contracts, treaties, etc. is to reach agreement between two counterparties. In general, the main purpose of this type of communication is to establish, develop and control business relations between individuals and organizations

The distinctive features (lexical, syntactical, etc) of official style depend on pragmatic purpose, contents and function of this or that document. Nevertheless there is a set of specific features relevant to this functional style:

• The style of official documents is known for its absence of ambiguity, objectivity, precision and logical cohesion. It’s formal and unemotive.

• Words are used only in their dictionary meaning. The vocabulary is characterized by domination of archaic, bookish, borrowed polysyllabic words of Latin or Greek origin. In the style of official documents set expressions, stock phrases and terms are also widely used, e.g. on behalf of; in addition to; the afore- mentioned; Your prompt reply will be appreciated, etc). The choice of terms depends on the sphere of communication (business letter, regulations, constitution, code, etc). We find here a large proportion of abbreviations, contractions and conventional symbols, e.g. GNI – Gross National Income, ITO – International Trade Organization, GNP – Gross National Product, etc.

• Syntax is complex as compared to that of commonly bookish texts. The syntactical patterns are also peculiar: wide use of objects, adverbial modifiers and attributes, parentheses, elucidating the utterance, e.g. This is to certify the first class quality of the materials used for the manufacture of the machines and their high quality and reliable operations for the period of 18 months from the date of delivery or 12 month after putting them into operation (whichever comes earlier).

• Official documents usually have a peculiar structure; they are drawn up according to a certain layout. Thus, the ordinary business letter comprises the following parts: 1) the date; 2) the insides address; 3) the opening salutation; 4) the subject heading; 5) the opening paragraph; 6) the body of the letter; 7) the closing paragraph; 8) the complimentary closing; 9) the signature.

Exercise

Analyse the peculiarities of functional styles and their particular substyles in the following examples (See I.R. Galperin. Stylistics)

1. In this theory we deal with automata effectively coupled to the external world, not merely by their energy flow, their metabolism, but also by a flow of impressions, of incoming messages, and of the actions of the outgoing messages. The organs by which impressions are received are the equivalents of the human and animal sense organs. They comprise photoelectric cells and other receptors for light; radar systems receiving their own short Hertzian waves; Hydrogen-ion-potential recorders, which may be said to taste; thermometers; pressure gauges of various sorts; microphones and so on. The effectors may be electrical motors or solenoids or heating coils or other instruments of very diverse sorts. Between the receptor or sense organ and the effector stands an intermediate set of elements whose function is to recombine the incoming impressions into such form as to produce a desired type of response in the effectors. The information fed into this central control system will very often contain information concerning the functioning of the effectors themselves. These correspond among other things to the kinaesthetic organs and other proprioceptors of the human system, for we too have organs which record the position of a joint or the rate of contraction of a muscle, etc. Moreover, the information received by the automaton need be used at once but may be delayed or stored so as to become available at some future time. This is the analogue of memory. Finally, as long as automaton is running, its very rules of operation are susceptible to some change on the basis of the data which have passed through its receptors in the past, and this is not unlike the process of learning.

The machines of which we are now speaking are neither the dream of a sensationalist nor the hope of some future time. They already exist as thermostats, automatic gyrocompass ship-steering systems, self-propelled missiles – especially those that seek their target – anti-aircraft fire-control systems, automatically-controlled oil-cracking still, ultra rapid computing machines, and the like. They had begun to be used long before the war – indeed the very old steam-engine governor belongs among them – but the great mechanisation of the Second World War brought them into their own, and the need of handling the extremely dangerous energy of the atom will probably bring them to a still higher point of development. Scarcely a month passes but a new book appears on these so-called control mechanisms, or servo-mechanisms, and the present age is as truly the age of servo-mechanisms as the nineteenth century was the age of steam engine or the eighteenth century the age of the clock.

To sum up: the many automata of the present age are coupled to the outside world both for the reception of impressions and for the performance of actions. They contain sense organs, effectors and the equivalent of a nervous system to integrate the transfer of information from one to the other. They lend themselves very well to the description in physiological terms. It is scarcely a miracle that they can be subsumed under one theory with the mechanisms of physiology.

2. That wasn’t to say that Mr. Bones always understood what his new master was talking about, however. Henry’s preoccupations were radically different from Willy’s, and the dog usually found himself at a loss whenever the boy started in on his pet subjects. How could Mr. Bones be expected to know what an earned run average was or how many games the Orioles were behind in the standings? In all the years he had spent with Willy, the poet had never once touched on the topic of baseball. Now, overnight, it seemed to have become a matter of life and death. The first thing Henry did every morning after meeting up with Mr. Bones at their corner was to put some coins into the newspaper dispenser and buy a copy of The Baltimore Sun. Then, hastening to a bench across the street, he would sit down, pull up the sports section, and read an account of the previous night’s game to Mr. Bones. If the Orioles had won, his voice was full of happiness and excitement. If the Orioles had lost, his voice was sad and mournful, at times even tinged with anger. Mr. Bones learned to hope for wins and dread the prospect of losses, but he never quite understood what Henry meant when he talked about the team. An oriole was a bird, not a group of men, and if the orange creature on Henry’s black cap was a bird, how could it be involved in something as strenuous and complex as baseball? Such were the mysteries of the new world he had entered. Orioles fought with tigers, blue jays battled against angels, bear cubs warred with giants, and none of it made any sense. A baseball player was a man, and yet once he joined a team he was turned into an animal, a mutant being, or a spirit who lived in heaven next to God.

According to Henry, there was one bird in the Baltimore flock who stood out from the rest. His name was Cal, and although he was no more than a ball-playing oriole, he seemed to embody the attributes of several other creatures as well: the endurance of a workhorse, the courage of a lion, and the strength of a bull. All that was perplexing enough, but when Henry decided that Mr. Bones’s new name should also be Cal – short for Cal Ripken Junior the Second – the dog was thrown into a state of genuine confusion.

3. 2 Wounded in Belfast Explosion

BELFAST – An explosion rocked a Catholic area of Belfast on Wednesday and two men, said to be a father and his son, were taken to hospital with extensive wounds, officials said.

The BBC cited “security sources” as saying an explosive device caused the blast, while other media reports said gas workers had ruled out a gas explosion. Northern Irish policemen said it was not yet clear what prompted it.

The explosion came a day after a pro-British guerrilla group, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, threatened to end its six-year cease-fire unless Catholic republicans stopped attacking Protestants in Belfast.

Northern Ireland’s ambulance service said two men aged about 30 and 60 had been seriously injured. One was still conscious afterward, and both were given life-support treatment on the way to Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital.

A hospital spokeswoman said the condition of the men – whom witnesses identified as a father and son – was “stable,” that the injuries were not life-threatening.

A photographer at the scene said a hole had been blown in the roof of a shed in the garden of a terraced house in the west Belfast neighborhood.

A guerrilla bombing would throw the province’s fragile peace process into turmoil. Minority Catholic republicans and pro-British Protestants resumed ruling the province together only in late May.

Britain has threatened to suspend the home rule government if guerrilla groups break their cease-fires.

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5. ECLIPSE

A few minutes past noon:

the birds begin their evening songs

and break for the trees;

the horse nods in its dimming stall.

Afraid of a truth that could blind

I turn my cold shoulder to the sun

and catch its shadow in a cardboard box

as though it were some rare bug

about to be effaced by the moon’s

slow thumb. To catalog is not enough.

What did Adam know, naming the apple?

What do astronomers suspect?

The sun like a swallowed sword

comes blazing back.

It is not chaos

I fear in this strange dusk

But the inexplicable order of things (L. Pastan).

6. You also have the right to tell a bigot what you think

Leonard Pitts

Miami Herald

For the record, I have no idea who let the dogs out. I didn’t even know the gate was open.

We Americans get hooked on saying some pretty silly things, you know? “Where’s the beef?” “Make my day.”

Generally, it is pretty harmless stuff. Granted, after the fifteenth time someone avows that he feels your pain, you probably are ready to inflict some of your own. But overall, yeah – pretty harmless.

There is, however, one expression that never fails to make me nuts. Truth be told, it is less a catchphrase than a cop-out, a meaningless thing people say – usually when accusations of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism or homophobia have been leveled and they are being asked to defend the indefensible.

“Entitled to my opinion,” they say. Or “entitled to his opinion,” as the case may be. The sense of it is the same even when the words vary: People clamber atop the First Amendment and remind us that it allows them or someone they decline to criticize to say or believe whatever they wish.

It happened again just the other day, on the eve of the Grammys. One of the entertainment news programs did an informal poll of musicians, asking them to comment on the rapper Eminem’s violently homophobic and misogynistic music. You would have sworn they all were reading from the same script: “He is entitled to say what he feels,” they said.

In that, they echoed the folks who thought John Rocker was unfairly maligned for his bigotry: “He is entitled to his opinion,” the ballplayer’s defenders told us. And that, in turn, was an echo of what happened in 1993 when a reporter asked a student at City University of New York about Dr. Leonard Jeffries’ claim of a Jewish conspiracy against black people. “He had a right to say whatever he chooses to say,” the student replied.

As I said, it makes me crazy – not because the observation isn’t correct, but because it is beside the point.

Anybody who is a more ardent supporter of the First Amendment than I probably ought to be on medication. I believe the liberties it grants are meaningless unless extended as far as possible into the ideological hinterlands. Only in this way can you preserve and defend those liberties for the rest of us. So, as far as I am concerned, every sexist, homophobe, communist, flag burner, Jew baiter, Arab hater and racist must be protected in the peaceful expression of his or her beliefs.

But acknowledging the right of the hateful to be hateful and the vile to be vile, it seems to me that the least I can do is use my own right of free speech to call those people what they are. It seems to me, in fact, that I have a moral obligation to do so. But many people embrace moral cowardice instead and blame it on the First Amendment.

It is a specious claim. The First Amendment is violated when the government seeks to censor expression. That didn’t happen to Eminem. That didn’t happen to John Rocker, either. What did happen was that media and private citizens criticized them and demanded that some price – public condemnation or professional demotion – be extracted as a penalty for the stupid things they said.

Friends and neighbors, that isn’t a violation of free speech. That is free speech. And if some folks confuse the issue, well, that is because too many of us believe freedom of speech means freedom from censure, the unfettered right to say whatever you please without anyone being allowed to complain. Worse, many of us accept that stricture for fear of seeming “judgmental.” These days, of course, “judgmental” is a four-letter word.

I make no argument for being closed-minded. People ought to open themselves to the widest possible variety of ideas and expressions. But that doesn’t mean losing your ability to discern or abdicating your responsibility to question, criticize … think. All ideas aren’t created equal. To pretend otherwise is to create a rush from judgment – to free a bigot from taking responsibility for his beliefs and allow him a façade of moral validity to hide behind.

So I could happily live the rest of my life without being reminded that this fool or that has the right to say what he thinks. Sure, he does. But you know what? We all do.

7. MOSCOW NARODNY BANK LIMITED

81 King William Street, London EC4p 4js

Registered Office. Registered in England No. 159752

Telex: London 885401 Swift Address: MNBLG2L Fax No: 071-2834843

Telephone: 071-623 2063

Our Ref: CASH/PC/LQ

Your Ref: 3404/A

Import Bank

Moscow

Dear Sirs,

Financial Agreement of 21.1.00 and Addendum

of 10.3.01 Finsider Transaction. Installment

plus Interest due 16^th January 2009

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With reference to your letter of 4^th February, 2009 and previous correspondence we inform you that after lengthy investigation of this matter we are unable to trace your alleged discrepancy in the overall amount paid.

We note from your records that settlements were paid value 16^th January, 2009 as the 15^th January 2009 was a United States Bank Holiday and that we received separate instructions from you to pay one additional day interest. In accordance with your instructions these additional amounts of interest were added and paid with accordingly.

Furthermore our debit to your account with us for the total was made up of several items representing separate presentations of the Promissory Notes from various banks

Accordingly, we should be obliged id you would review your records once again and inform us on what specific debit advice (quoting our Statement debit number) the discrepancy has arisen.

Please provide us with the additional information required to enable us to pursue this enquiry on your behalf.

Yours faithfully,

p.p. MOSCOW NARODNY BANK LIMITED.

Examination questions on stylistics

1. The Subject Matter of Stylistics. The Notion of Style

2. Expressive Means. The Difference between Stylistic Devices /Expressive Means

3. Stylistic Devices. The Difference between Stylistic Devices /Expressive Means

4. Image. The Main Kinds of Image

5. Onomatopoeia. Alliteration. Assonance

6. Rhyme and Rhythm

7. Graphic Means of Stylistics

8. Stylistic Classification of the English Vocabulary. Poetic Words. Archaisms

9. Common Literary Words. Barbarisms. Terms

10. Stylistic Classification of the English Vocabulary. Colloquialisms

11. Slang. Jargon words. Vulgarisms

12. Metaphor. Personification

13. Allusion. Antonomasia

14. Allegory. Irony

15. Metonymy. Synecdoche

16. Periphrasis. Euphemism

17. Hyperbole. Meiosis. Litotes

18. Simile. Epithet

19. Oxymoron. Antithesis

20. Pun, Zeugma

21. Climax. Anticlimax

22. Ellipsis. Aposiopesis

23. Asyndeton. Polysyndeton

24. Detachment. Parenthesis

25. Repetition. Enumeration

26. Inversion. Syntactic Tautology. Emphatic constructions

27. Parallelism. Chiasmus

28. Anaphora, Epiphora. Rhetorical Question.

29. Publicistic Style

30. Belles – Lettres Style

31. The Style of Official Documents

32. Newspaper Style

33. Scientific Style

Literature

1. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка.- Л., 1990.-301с.

2. Гальперин И.Р. Стилистика английского языка.- М., 1977.- 335 с.

3. Гальперин И.Р. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования.- М., 1981.-138 с.

4. Кухаренко В.А. Практикум по стилистике английского языка.- М., 1986.- 144 с.

5. Мальцев В.А. Стилистика английского языка.- Мн., 1984.- 117с.

6. Скребнев Ю.М. Основы стилистики английского языка.- М., 1994.- 240с.

7. Соловьева Н.К., Кортес Л.П. Практическое пособие по интерпретации текста.- Мн., 1986.- 224 с.

8. Стилистика английского языка /А.Н. Мороховский, О.П. Воробьева, Н.И. Лихошерст, З.В. Тимошенко. – К., 1991.- 272 с.

9. Разинкина Н.М. Функциональная стилистика.- М., 1989.-182 с.

Учебное пособие по стилистике современного английского языка для студентов 4-5 курсов заочной формы обучения специальности 6. 030500 «английский язык и литература» профессионального направления подготовки 0305 Филология, направления 6. 020303 филология* (английский язык и литература) отрасли знаний 0303 «Гуманитарные науки» образовательно-квалификационного уровня «бакалавр»

Авторы-составители: Полховская Елена Васильевна,

Мазина Елена Николаевна

Рецензент: декан факультета переподготовки КРИППО,

Кандидат филологических наук О.П.Косенко

Редактор: Н.А. Вовк

Подписано к печати Формат 60х84/16. Бумага тип. ОП

Объем п.л. Тираж -100 Заказ – Бесплатно

__________________________________________________________________

95007, Симферополь, пр. Академика Вернадского, 4.

Таврический национальный университет им. В.И.Вернадского

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